Sunday, August 21 1921: The second son of Viscount Otawara was arrested.

1921 (Taisho 10) On Sunday, August 21, it was reported that Junior Lieutenant Shu Otawara (35), the second son of Kazukiyo Otawara (viscount), the last lord of the Otawara Domain in former Tochigi Prefecture (the 14th), was arrested at Ueno Station. Shu was arrested by a plain-clothes detective on alert for the eighth crime he committed in Ueno Station. A scandal about a noble family attracted public attention.

Shimotsuke Province is famous as the birthplace of NASU no Yoichi. The Nasu clan had seven powerful vassals called Nasu Shichiki. One of them is Mr. Otawara. In the 16 century, Japan’s Sengoku period, when the Nasu clan joined Hideyoshi Toyotomi’s attack on the Odawara Hojo clan, the territory was approved as the late Nasu clan was deprived of its status by the Toyotomi clan.

In the Edo period, Kazukiyo OTAWARA, who was the last lord of the Otawara Domain, a small domain with a stipend of 12000 koku, met with the end of the Edo period without having his territory changed, and he was the last lord of the domain. During the Boshin War, while the domains in northern Kanto and Tohoku formed the Ouetsu-reppan alliance centering on Aizu, he quickly obeyed the new government army of Saccho (Satsuma and Choshu) and received a concentrated attack from the Tohoku domains of the former Shogunate, which made him suffer from the castle town being burned down by the Aizu domain. Because of this, Kazukiyo was appointed as Governor of Otawara Domain and later became a viscount.

He was also a member of the House of Lords and a member of a noble family, but his second son Shu was disowned early because of his misconduct since he was young. Shu entered the army and became a second lieutenant in the cavalry and reserve duty in Utsunomiya’s 18 Regiment, but his father Kazukiyo probably never imagined that he would be arrested for being a habitual criminal strapped from poverty at Ueno Station.

Kazukiyo Otawara retired in 1923 and died on October 28, 1930 at the age of 70. It is not clear what happened to his second son Shu since then.