One Hundred Sacks of Rice by Yuzo Yamamoto, translated by Donald Keene (Nagaoka City Kome Hyappyo Foundation) ~Ernie Hoyt

One Hudred Sacks of Rice is an English translation of a stage play based on the fictionalized story of Torasaburo Kobayashi, the Grand Council of the Nagaoka Domain in feudal Japan. The play titled 米百袋 (Kome Hyappyo) was written by Yuzo Yamato. This English edition was translated by Japanese scholar and permanent Japan resident, Donald Keene. 

The story is set in the city of Nagaoka in Echigo Province, present-day Niigata Prefecture. Currently, the  city is famous for its summer fireworks display. The time is the third year of the Meiji era (1870) at the end of May. There were still many domains throughout the country and the order for men to cut their hair and give up their swords had not yet been issued. Many of the policies of the new government had yet to take effect and a lot of old customs still lingered. 

During the Boshin War, Japan’s Civil War, Nagaoka had sided with the Tokugawa Shogunate who fought against the domains for the Imperial Court who wanted to “revere the Emperor, expel the barbarians”. To put down the rebellion, the Shogunate forces literally wiped Nagaoka off the map. After the war, Nagaoka was impoverished and the people were starving. A neighboring province gifted the city with one hundred sacks of rice. 

In feudal Japan, rice was the equivalent of hard currency. When the lower ranked samurai of Nagaoka learned that the city would be getting one hundred sacks of rice, they felt they would be relieved from their suffering. However, when they learned that the Grand Councillor was going to sell the rice so he could build a school.

This decision angered the samurai and they decided to take action against the Great Councillor. They went to Grand Councillor Torasaburo Kobayashi’s home, brandished their swords and demanded that he divide up the rice and comply with their wishes immediately.

Torasaburo Kobayashi doesn’t answer them. The samurai ask Torasaburo, “Why don’t you answer?”, “What’s the matter? Why are you silent?”. He finally responds by saying, “Nothing can be done to help”. One of the samurai says, “No, there is something. Don’t we have the hundred sacks of rice given to us for relife. If you distribute it, that will settle everything”. 

Kobayashi is not taken in by their threats. He admonishes them, saying, “Have you nothing better in mind? Why do you suggest anything to picayune? ‘A hundred sacks of rice’, ‘a hundred sacks of rice’. He asks the samurai, “just how much do you think this represents?”. He tells them if he were to divide up the rice for everybody, they would have enough to eat for two days. What will the samurai do after that?

Kobayashi tells them it’s because there were no capable men in the government. What the nation needs are capable men, and the only way to get capable men is by education. “Whether a town flourishes or decays, the answer relies in every instance with the people” - “as long as people continue to appeary and they are educated, no matter how badly a country has declined, they will restore it”. 

What really shames the samurai is Torasaburo Kobayashi’s final trump card. He shows the samurai a scroll written by Shozan (Sakuma Shoza, aka Sakuma Zozan), a scholar and teacher that every samurai is familiar with. Written on the scroll is “Always on the Battlefied!”. Kobayashi reminds the samurai that these words have been instilled in every samurai of the Mikawa clan (which includes Nagaoka) and has been observed as a particarly important principle. He explains, “To say ‘We are always on the battlefield’ means that even in times of peace, we must endure every hardship and privation in the same spirit as on the battlefield”. 

Although the script for the stage play is rather short, falling around less than one hundred pages, this book includes a lot of extra material that will help the reader appreciate the story even more. 

First, Keene says to better understand the story, you need to know about the writer, Yuzu Yamamoto, as well. Although the play is based on an actual incident and Torasaburo Kobayashi did exist, the rest of the characters were from the imagination of Yamamoto. The story is not presented as a mere history lesson but is an entertaining piece of literature as well. 

Keene also provides background on the “Spirit of Bushido”, the “Way of the Warrior”, a short history of the Boshin War and the true story of the “The Hundred Sacks of Rice”, followed by a profile of Torasaburo Kobayashi. 

Torasaburo Kobayahi may not be as well known Ieyasu Tokugawa, Japan’s first Shogun” or Nobunaga Oda, Takamori Saigo, or Ryoma Sakamoto but he is an integral part of the modernification of Japan. The story still holds true today - “Whether a country rises or falls, whether a town flourishes or decays, the answer lies in every case with the people” - educated ones at that!