Bojutsu Yumemonogatari: The Courage to Criticize the Shogunate
In 1837, the American ship Morrison appeared off Uraga in an attempt to repatriate Japanese castaways, but was driven off by cannon fire under the shogunate's expulsion-of-foreign-ships order. In 1838, Chōei wrote Bojutsu Yumemonogatari, using the device of a dream and debate among characters to critique this response. The book pointed out the inhumanity of the expulsion order and the dangers of the regime's foreign policy; it circulated widely in manuscript and enraged the conservatives in the shogunate. It was the crystallization of a Rangaku scholar's dangerous passion in directly criticizing the shogunate under national isolation.
1844: Escape from the Prison Fire
On June 30, 1844, a fire broke out at the Denma-chō prison compound in Edo. By regulation, inmates were temporarily released during fires under the 'kirihanashi' system, which reduced their punishment if they returned within three days. It is said that Chōei himself had prisoners start the fire. He chose not to return within the period but to flee, and for the next six years he went by the name 'Sawa Sanpaku,' burned his face with nitric acid to alter his features, and continued translating Dutch books while in hiding. He translated Western military treatises like Sanpei Takōchiki, influencing the enlightened faction of the late Edo period.
On October 30, 1850, Chōei was surrounded by shogunal agents at a rented house in Aoyama Hyakunin-chō in Edo. After resistance he is said either to have smashed his own head with a jutte and died, or to have been cut down by the agents. He was 47. After six years on the run he had continued translating Rangaku works and criticizing the shogunate — an indomitable life. Manuscripts entrusted to friends made their way into the world even after his death. Among Rangaku scholars, he was the one who fought the shogunate most fiercely, embodying both the light and the darkness of the calling.