A major foothold of Chinese Revolution led by Sun Yat-sen was in Japan.
A Japanese who had supported Sun Yat-sen to build the foothold or raise funds for Chinese Revolution is Miyazaki Toten.
Miyazaki Toten was distinguished from other Japanese politicians or leaders in refusing definitely any bribery or cajolery.He had continued to help Sun Yat-sen devotedly,and Sun Yat-sen recognized Miyazaki as a friend of all his life.
Toten was actually a true friend of Chinese people in the time of Chinese Revolution.


Miyazaki Toten

Ooegijyuku Boarding School

Miyazaki Toten was born in Arao,Kumamoto prefecture in 1871.
At the age of 15, he entered Ooegijyuku Boarding School and learned about the freedom and people's rights movement.
After that, he attended Tokyo Senmon Gakko (present-day Waseda University) and tried to went to America for study but his senior brother Miyazaki Yazou retained him.
Instead,Yazou inspired Toten his thought that the rise and fall of China would have a clue to regain freedom and human rights in Asian people and insisted that Toten should devote his life to Chinese Revolution.
Miyazaki Toten sympathized with his brother's thought and went to Shanghai with his brother Yazou at the age of 22.
But Miyazaki Toten was soon in short of funds and returned to Japan. Thereafter,Toten cheated his family saying that he went to America and sold family's fortune in order to raise the fund.
For the time being,he parted from his wife and children,and fell into desperate poverty only dreaming of the future of China.
It is Inukai Tuyosi who had given a helping hand to Miyazaki Toten. Inukai Tuyoshi had belonged to Constitutional Reform Party and later became a prime minister.
Through the good office of Inukai, Toten could meet Ookuma Shigenobu,the foreign minister of Constitutional Reform Party at that time. He was given the funds as the name of foreign minister's confidential funds and was commissioned to gather infomation in China.
Toten traveled around Hong Kong and Macao and visited activists dreaming of revolution. In the meantime,Toten came to know the man called Sun Yat-sen,one of the major activists,and the fact that Sun Yat-sen lived in Tokyo.
Toten returned to Tokyo and met Sun Yat-sen.Toten was deeply moved by his revolutionary vision,and became an ardent supporter of him.
Moreover, Miyazaki Toten decided to go together with Sun Yat-sen until Chinese Revolution would suceed.

＜Miyazaki Brothers' Material Hall＞

Miyazaki family's former house and material hall in Arao city,Kumamoto prefecture,displays the trace of Miyazaki brothers who devoted themselves completely to the way of modernization of Japan.
There is also various materials related with Chinese Revolution and Sun Yat-sen, beginning with the memorandum jotted down between Sun Yat-sen and Miyazaki Toten.
It is in 1647 in the Edo period that the ancestors of Miyazaki appeared in Arao village,Kumamoto prefecture.
The members of Miyazaki family loved villagers deeply with a rebellious spirit and were men of renown respected as a master of the villagers.
Their father Masakata loved freedom, hated fame, and gave full affection to the weaks.
Their mother Saki was compassionate, enthusiastic in education,and taught them that dying on the tatami mat was the most shameful thing.
Miyazaki family had four sons.The second son Hachirou became sympathized with the movement of freedom democratic rights,founded Ueki School in 1875,and was regarded as one of the leaders of the movement.But he died in the War of Seinan.
The 6th son Tamizou tripped in European countries and America,canvassing for the equal-land-allocation.
In 1907,Tamizou went to China with a dream of realizing the equal-land-rights insisted by Sun Yat-sen .
But he passed away in the half way of the realizing his vision at the age of 64.
The 7th son Yazou expected ideal country in the Chinese Revolution, had his hair cut and learned the Chinese language and custom.He passed away at the age of 30.
The 8th son was Miyazaki Toten.
In 1897,an exile Sun Yat-sen visited at the village of Arao.
The scene of the meeting between Sun Yat-sen and Mizazaki Toten was revived in the Miyazaki brother's Material Hall.
In the garden of Miyazaki's former house, there is a old tree,a fountain,a miso cellar,and a linden tree which Toten brought back from Siam.
They reminded us of what they were in those days.

Outstanding　point of Miyazaki Toen is in the fact that he gave his concern not only to revolution in the small domestic world but to the one in all of the world, under the times of capitalistic powers expanding intervention and invasion to countries nearby Japan.
He joined directly or indirectly some riots in arms led by Revolutionary League during the times from the foundation of Revolutionary League to the Uprising in Wuchang.
Weapons which people of the China Revolutionary Party secretly bought was supplied by Japanese merchants through his intermediation.
In 1898, he went again to China urged by influential politician Inukai Tuyosi and met Kang Youwei guarded under British reign in Hong Kong and helped him to exile to Japan.
Moreover, Miyazaki Toten cooperated with the war of independence in Philippines,requested by Sun Yat-sen in 1900.
With the support of Inukai Tuyoshi,he made every effort to supply weapons.
A faction of Sun Yat-sen rose in riot in Huizhou and Sun Yat-sen also prepared to rise in riot. But weapons expected to be sent to them was not transported disappintedly,Toten was suspected of embezzlement.He was disgusted with those affairs and once retreated,and became a disciple of Naniwabushi reciter (Japanese singer of old song).
Miyazaki Toten was fond of music by birth and in those days Nniwabusi reciter had a big chance to make money.
Toten became Naniwabushi reciter without losing his vision to revolution, endured the poverty,and continued to support exiles beginning with SunYat-sen and Chinese students of anti-Quing dynasty in Japan.
He persuaded the people of reformism led by Kang Youwei to abandon the vision of remaining the Quing dynasty and convert them to unite with the Revise China led by Sun Yat-sen and cooperate with the overthrowing the Quing dynasty.
In 1905,he went to and from the leaders of the Revise China Society,Society for the Revival of China and Light Revival Society,and set up the meeting between Sun Yat-sen and Huang Xing. This meeting promoted the unificaitoion of those Societies,and eventually the Revoltionary United League was eventually reorganized.
It finally led to the success of Chinese Revolution in 1911.

E-mail to Yoshimura Naohiro.