Kinjirō Ashiwara

Kinjirō Ashiwara (Japanese: 葦原金次郎, Hepburn: Ashiwara Kinjirō, IPA: [a̠ɕiɰᵝa̠ɾa̠ kʲĩɴʑiɾoː]; November 3, 1850[2][3][lower-alpha 1] – February 2, 1937) was a self-proclaimed "emperor" who rose to a celebrity status with his grandiose delusions and theatrical antics that were covered by the Japanese press for decades, beginning in the Meiji era. He styled himself first as Shogun Ashiwara (葦原将軍, Ashiwara Shōgun),[5] then later as Emperor Ashiwara (葦原皇帝, Ashiwara Kōtei, or 葦原天皇, Ashiwara Tennō)[6] and Sovereign Ashiwara (葦原帝, Ashiwara Mikado).[4]

The native form of this personal name is Ashiwara Kinjirō. This article uses Western name order when mentioning individuals.

Kinjirō Ashiwara
葦原 金次郎
Ashiwara in his court dress (大礼服姿), which became his signature clothing starting with the end of the Meiji era[1]
Born(1850-11-03)November 3, 1850
Takaoka, Etchū Province, Japan
DiedFebruary 2, 1937(1937-02-02) (aged 86)
Tokyo, Japan
Known forGrandiose delusions
Japanese name
Kanji葦原 金次郎
Kanaあしわら きんじろう
Transcriptions
RomanizationAshiwara Kinjirō
Signature
葦原皇帝 (Emperor Ashiwara)

After disrupting Emperor Meiji's procession and attempting to approach him, Ashiwara was involuntarily hospitalized in the Tokyo Metropolitan Psychiatric Asylum (present-day Tokyo Metropolitan Matsuzawa Hospital) in 1882 and, despite a few escapes and re-detainments, remained there until his death in 1937.

Early life and marriage

Ashiwara was born in Takaoka, Etchū Province (present-day Takaoka, Toyama)[7] as the third son of a samurai of Takaoka clan.[3] As a young adult, Ashiwara worked for a comb wholesaler in Fukaya, Saitama Prefecture.[3] According to a Yomiuri Shimbun report, he worked as a confectioner.[7]

He suffered a nervous breakdown around the time he moved to Tokyo at the age of 20.[5] He was married at the age of 24 but his wife "ran away"; they later divorced.[5] He began calling himself "Shogun Ashiwara" around 1875 as his mental condition seemingly deteriorated.[5]

Initial newspaper reports

The earliest extant mention of Ashiwara in the Japanese media occurred on June 1, 1880, in an article titled "Famous Man Shogun Ashiwara: Huge Scene at the Ministry of the Treasury (名物男葦原将軍/大蔵省で大気焰)" on Tokyo Eiri Shimbun,[8] a minor daily newspaper of the Meiji era.[9] According to the article, he caused a public disturbance with his "usual" angry outbursts at the Ministry of the Treasury and was taken to the police station.[8]

On June 12, Tokyo Jiyu Shimbun reported that Ashiwara had come into a telegraph bureau office in Tokyo and declared that he was "Shogun Ashiwara, Senior Third-Rank Imperial Appointee and First-Class Minister of the Left"[lower-alpha 2] and that he needed to send an urgent telegram to Li Hongzhang, a well-known diplomat of the Qing dynasty in China, over "a matter of great concern". The alarmed office staff called the police.[10]

Hospitalization

In July 1881, Ashiwara disrupted a procession of Emperor Meiji, who was on a tour of the Tohoku region, and attempted to approach him.[12][13] Ashiwara was arrested and admitted to the Tokyo Metropolitan Psychiatric Asylum (present-day Tokyo Metropolitan Matsuzawa Hospital) in 1882, having been diagnosed with hereditary mania.[12] The psychiatrists who later evaluated him, however, disagreed on the diagnosis of his condition; opinions were largely divided between paranoid schizophrenia and chronic mania.[14] Dictionary of Clinical Psychiatry noted that, although delusional, he did not suffer from a personality breakdown caused by dementia.[4]

Ashiwara escaped from the hospital three times—in 1885, 1892, and 1904—but was re-detained each time.[15] From May 7 to June 20, 1903, the Yomiuri Shimbun, one of the country's major newspapers, serialized an article titled "Mankind's Greatest Dark World: Psychiatric Hospital (人類の最大暗黒界瘋癲病院)", in which the living conditions and treatments of patients at the hospital (then-named Sugamo Prefectural Hospital) were described in detail.[7] It included an entry on Ashiwara:

Since his hospitalization, [Ashiwara] has become famous as a madman. [...] he thinks of the hospital as his own domain, and walks about arrogantly and brazenly, blabbing big lies out of his mouth about how the emperor of France has come to see him, or how he had a sumo match with the president of the United States. [...] but what I detest is that he scolds other patients and forcibly takes their tableware and utensils away from them.[7]

Tokyo Prefecture Matsuzawa Hospital (previously Tokyo Metropolitan Psychiatric Asylum) in 1933, where Ashiwara remained until his death in 1937

His grandiose delusions allegedly worsened after he learned of Japan's victory in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.[16] He started to grow a long white beard and wear a court dress which he somehow had obtained from an unknown source.[16] During the Taishō era (1912–1926), he held press conferences at the hospital whenever there was political turbulence.[17] Newspaper reporters would visit Ashiwara when they ran out of news material.[12] Being a celebrity whose comments on controversial topics of the world politics and the current affairs—such as occasions of lèse-majesté or alleged tyranny of the military[17]—were delusional, yet uninhibited[17] and often amusing,[18] he was an easy source of news stories for them.[12] Some of the reporters even asked Count Nogi Maresuke and Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi to have a meeting with Ashiwara, much to their chagrin.[18]

Soon after the Shōwa era began in 1926, Ashiwara started to call himself "emperor" and sold papers with his chokugo (Imperial edict) written on them to visitors.[6] He remained in the hospital until his death in 1937. The vice president of the Matsuzawa Hospital performed an autopsy on Ashiwara's body and stated that he observed no pathological findings in Ashiwara's brain.[7]

See also
  • Emperor Norton – Self-proclaimed Emperor of the United States (1818–1880)

Notes
  1. Dictionary of Clinical Psychiatry (臨床精神医学辞典, Rinshō seishin igaku jiten, 1985) states that he was born in 1852.[4]
  2. "正三位勅任官勲一等左大臣蘆原将軍".[10] Imperial Appointee (勅任官) or Chokuninkan was a class of officials appointed by a decree of the emperor; it was created in 1869 and abolished in 1949.[11]

References
  1. Nakamura, Masaki; et al., eds. (February 20, 1983). 1930年: 恐慌と軍拡のはざまで [1930: Between Depression and Military Expansion]. 一億人の昭和史 [100 Million People's Shōwa-era History] (in Japanese). Vol. 39. Tokyo: The Mainichi Newspapers Co. p. 183. OCLC 959637831. NCID BN12487666. (...) その服は明治の末から将軍の晴れ着であり看板だった
  2. Ueda, Masaaki; et al., eds. (December 2001). "葦原金次郎 あしわら-きんじろう" [Ashiwara Kinjirō]. デジタル版 日本人名大辞典+Plus [Digital Edition: Biographical Dictionary of Japanese People+Plus] (in Japanese). Tokyo: Kodansha. ISBN 4062108496. NCID BA54622879. Archived from the original on March 6, 2022. Retrieved May 23, 2023 – via Kotobank.
  3. "あしわらしょうぐん【葦原将軍】" [Ashiwara Shōgun]. Heibonsha World Encyclopedia (in Japanese) (2nd ed.). Heibonsha. October 1998. ISBN 978-4582041019. NCID BA38818315. Archived from the original on March 6, 2022. Retrieved May 23, 2023 – via Kotobank.
  4. Nishimaru, Shihō, ed. (1985). "葦原金次郎 (1852–1937)". 臨床精神医学辞典 [Dictionary of Clinical Psychiatry] (in Japanese) (2nd ed.). Tokyo: 南山堂 [Nanzando]. ISBN 9784525385125. Archived from the original on March 1, 2021. Retrieved May 25, 2023 – via actioforma.net/kokikawa.
  5. Kawamura, Kunimitsu (1990). 幻視する近代空間 迷信・病気・座敷牢, あるいは歴史の記憶 [Illusions of Modern Space: Superstition, Disease, Prison, or Historical Memory] (in Japanese). Tokyo: Seikyūsha. p. 147. OCLC 674186137. NCID BN04608095. Retrieved May 24, 2023 – via Google Books. 芦原は二十四歳で結婚したが、懲役に処せられ、妻に逃げられ離別した。この翌年の一八七五年(明治八)頃より、「芦原将軍」と自称しだし、精神変調がすすん (...)
  6. Ogawa, Kandai (April 18, 2014). "「葦原将軍」というトリックスター 稀代のニセ軍人が愛された理由" [Trickster "Ashiwara Shōgun": Why the Rare Fake Military Man Was Loved]. 昭和「軍人」列伝 [Biographies of Showa-Era Military People]. 別冊宝島 (in Japanese). Vol. 2156. Takarajimasha. p. 104. ISBN 978-4800225238. 昭和に入ると、葦原は将軍どころか「天皇」を自称するようになる。会う人に、自分でつくった「勅語」なるものが書かれた紙を売りつけたりもするようになった。
  7. Koizumi, Hiroaki (September 10, 2008). "斎藤茂吉と葦原将軍" [Mokichi Saito and Ashiwara Shōgun]. GSSC Magazine (日本大学大学院 総合社会情報研究科 電子マガジン [Electronic Magazine of Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies, Nihon University] (in Japanese). Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies, Nihon University. 33. Archived from the original on April 15, 2022. Retrieved May 24, 2023.
  8. Kawamura, Kunimitsu (1990). 幻視する近代空間 迷信・病気・座敷牢, あるいは歴史の記憶 [Illusions of Modern Space: Superstition, Disease, Prison, or Historical Memory] (in Japanese). Tokyo: Seikyūsha. p. 139. OCLC 674186137. NCID BN04608095. Retrieved May 24, 2023 – via Google Books. 芦原金次郎が新聞紙上に初めて登場するのは、一八八〇年(明治十三)六月一日の『東京絵入新聞』の「名物男葦原将軍/大蔵省で大気焰」(...)
  9. Britannica Japan Co., ed. (2007). "東京絵入新聞 とうきょうえいりしんぶん" [Tokyo Eiri Shimbun]. ブリタニカ国際大百科事典 小項目事典 [Britannica International Encyclopædia: Short Entries Edition]. LogoVista電子辞典シリーズ (in Japanese). Tokyo: LogoVista. OCLC 676617067. Archived from the original on April 19, 2022. Retrieved May 26, 2023 – via Kotobank.
  10. Masayasu, Araki; et al., eds. (1976). 新聞が語る明治史: 明治元年–明治25年 [The History of the Meiji Era as Told by Newspapers: The First to 25th Year of the Meiji Era]. 明治百年史叢書 (in Japanese). Harashobo. p. 302. ISBN 9784562202577. OCLC 703852137. NCID BN00949108. Retrieved May 24, 2023 – via Google Books. 千住の電信分局へ一人の男が飛で来て、拙者儀は何を隠さう正三位勅任官勲一等左大臣蘆原将軍藤原の諸味なり、今日眉を焼くの大事件あって至急支那の李鴻章へ電報打て貰ひ度と (...)
  11. "「勅任官」の意味・わかりやすい解説" [Definition of Chokuninkan, a simple explanation]. 日本大百科全書 (ニッポニカ) [Complete Japanese Encyclopedia (Encyclopedia Nipponica)] (in Japanese). Shogakukan. 1984–1994. Retrieved June 11, 2023 – via Kotobank.
  12. Nakamura, Masaki; et al., eds. (February 20, 1983). 1930年: 恐慌と軍拡のはざまで [1930: Between Depression and Military Expansion]. 一億人の昭和史 [100 Million People's Shōwa-era History] (in Japanese). Vol. 39. Tokyo: The Mainichi Newspapers Co. p. 183. OCLC 959637831. NCID BN12487666.
  13. 歴史と人物 [History and People] (in Japanese). Vol. 9. Chuokoron-Shinsha. 1979. p. 139. OCLC 5821189. Retrieved May 25, 2023 – via Google Books. 精神病院史家の鈴木芳次が、紹介しているのはこうだ「明治十四年七月、明治天皇の東北巡幸の鹵簿(行列)へ、突然発狂した金次郎が近づこうとして、一躍狂名を高めるにいたっ (...)
  14. Okada, Yasuo (1981). 私說松沢病院史 1879–1980 [Private History of Matsuzawa Hospital 1879–1980] (in Japanese). Iwasaki Gakujutu Shuppansya. p. 115. OCLC 24983276. Retrieved May 26, 2023 – via Google Books. (...) 芦原の病気はなんだったろうか? それには妄想型分裂病説と慢性躁病説とある。呉の臨床講義の写真に、芦原将軍がたっているわきの黒板に「偏執病/躁鬱病/妄想性痴呆/パラフレニーン」とかかれているものが (...)
  15. 歴史と人物 [History and People] (in Japanese). Vol. 4–6. Chuokoron-Shinsha. 1979. p. 139. OCLC 5821189. Retrieved May 28, 2023 – via Google Books. 明治十八年、二十五年、三十七年と病院から三回も逃げているが、(...)
  16. Ogawa, Kandai (April 18, 2014). "「葦原将軍」というトリックスター 稀代のニセ軍人が愛された理由" [Trickster "Ashiwara Shōgun": Why the Rare Fake Military Man Was Loved]. 昭和「軍人」列伝 [Biographies of Showa-Era Military People]. 別冊宝島 (in Japanese). Vol. 2156. Takarajimasha. p. 104. ISBN 978-4800225238. 葦原の「将軍」の自称は、日露戦争の勝報を聞いてますます過激になっていく。長いひげを伸ばし、どこからか手に入れた将軍の礼服を着た姿はそれなりに堂々としており、(...)
  17. Nishimura, Hideki (1998). "健康に対するアンチテーゼ: 病気・死の排除と社会統制" [An Antithesis to Health : the Exclusion of Diseases and Death, and Social Control] (PDF). 健康科学 [Journal of Health Science] (in Japanese). Kyushu University. 20: 58. doi:10.15017/429. Archived (PDF) from the original on February 8, 2023. Retrieved May 28, 2023 – via Kyushu University Institutional Repository. 大正デモクラシーの時代には政変のたびに将軍の記者会見が開かれたという。その彼の自由奔放な行為は，当時の不敬罪や軍部の専横, (...) に対する表だってはできない批判を代弁することになった。
  18. Ogawa, Kandai (April 18, 2014). "「葦原将軍」というトリックスター 稀代のニセ軍人が愛された理由" [Trickster "Ashiwara Shōgun": Why the Rare Fake Military Man Was Loved]. 昭和「軍人」列伝 [Biographies of Showa-Era Military People]. 別冊宝島 (in Japanese). Vol. 2156. Takarajimasha. p. 104. ISBN 978-4800225238. 新聞記者などは特に葦原を面白おかしく取り上げ、時に世界情勢や政局の状況など、大真面目な社会ネタについて質問。(...) 妙に味のあるトンチンカンな答えが返ってくるので、記者たちはこれまた面白おかしく飾って紙面にまれすけ載せた。陸軍大将・乃木希典や、元首相の伊藤博文に面会を求めて、彼らを困らせたこともあったようだ。
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