Fujita Tōko was a Confucian scholar of the Mito domain in the late Edo period, he was a leading exponent of the movement to restore power to the emperor and expel the foreigners.
Background
Fujita Tōko was born on 3 May 1803 in Mito. His personal name was Takeki, his common name was Hinkei, and his childhood name Takejiro, which was later changed to Tora- nosuke. He was the son of Fujita Yukoku, a distinguished scholar of the fief of Mito.
In 1824, when a British ship landed in Hitachi, where the Mito domain was situated, Toko, acting on orders from his father, planned to attack and cut down the foreigners as an expression of antiforeign sentiment, but the plan failed.
Career
On his father’s death he became head of the family and was appointed a member of the Shokokan, an institution sponsored by the domain and devoted to the writing of history and other scholarly matters.
In 1829 he was appointed acting director of the Shokokan. This same year a dispute arose over who should succeed to the position of lord of Mito. Toko supported Tokugawa Nariaki, and when Nariaki was chosen as daimyo, Toko enjoyed his confidence and set about introducing various administrative reforms. In 1837, on Nariaki’s orders, he produced an annotated edition of the laws governing the clan school, entitled Kodokan-ki jutsugi, which contamed a characteristic expression of the Mito domain’s views on the need to honor the emperor and resist foreign encroachment.
In 1844, when Nariaki aroused the displeasure of the shogun and was forced to relinquish his position as daimyo, Toko was at the same time placed under house confinement. Nariaki was pardoned and restored to his post in 1848, at which time Toko once more became his close adviser.
In the great Ansei earthquake that struck Edo on the second day of the tenth month of 1854, he was crushed to death in the ruins of the Mito clan residence at Koishikawa.