Kaishu and Ryoma: The Indispensable Relationship (Part 1)

Posted on September 30, 2015 by Romlus Hillsborough

Sakamoto Ryoma & Katsu Kaishu

It is well known that Katsu Kaishu and Sakamoto Ryoma had a very close relationship for a couple of years. But their relationship abruptly ended with the dismissal of Kaishu as the shogun’s commissioner of warships and his subsequent house arrest near the end of 1864, for harboring the likes of Ryoma and other known renegades intent on overthrowing the shogun’s government. And though the two men would never meet again, neither could have accomplished his greatest task without the other.

Kaishu taught Ryoma how to navigate a steamship, state-of-the-art technology that enabled him to establish and operate his merchant marine (Kaientai=Naval Auxiliary Corps), by which he ran guns for the revolution after his break with Kaishu. All of that was essential to Ryoma’s greater achievement of brokering an alliance between Satsuma and Choshu against the shogunate in early 1866. Satsuma was led by Saigo Takamori, to whom Kaishu had introduced Ryoma just before his dismissal from the government – and it is doubtful that without his Kaishu connection Ryoma would have been in the position to even talk to Saigo. Without the Satsuma-Choshu Alliance, of course, it is highly unlikely that the Meiji Restoration would have happened as and when it did – that is to say, it is doubtful that it would have been led by Satsuma and Choshu between the end of 1867 and early 1868.

The shogunate was abolished and the Imperial government was established at the end of the Twelfth Month of the year Keio 3 – January 3, 1868. Saigo represented the Imperial government in the talks with Kaishu to avert all-out civil war in Edo (modern-day Tokyo) in the spring of 1868. Kaishu, as commander of the military forces of the fallen shogun, agreed to surrender the shogun’s castle in Edo to avoid war. But he later remarked that had anyone but Saigo represented the Imperial government, “the talks would have broken down immediately.” Catastrophe would have followed, undoubtedly changing the course of history – and Katsu Kaishu would not have gone down in history as the man who saved the great city of Edo from the ravages of civil war.

[Read Part 2 of this series here.]

For updates about new content, connect with me on Facebook.

For more on Katsu Kaishu’s relationships with Ryoma and Saigo, see Samurai Revolution.

Top of Page

Clean up the world once and for all!

Posted on September 27, 2015 by Romlus Hillsborough

As I announce the launching of the Ryoma Society of America, I recall these famous words of Sakamoto Ryoma: 日本を今一度せんたくいたし申候 – in which he vowed to “clean up Japan once and for all.” By “cleaning up” his country, Ryoma meant to eliminate the corrupt and antiquated Tokugawa Shogunate, which had ruled Japan for 260 years, and replace it with a modern democracy based on Western models.

Ryoma wrote the above words in a letter to his sister Otome in the tumultuous summer of 1863, as Japan’s modern revolution was heating up. But these words are universal, I believe, and just as relevant in today’s world rife with war, violence, and chaos.

As the United States presidential campaign heats up, the American people, along with their fellow citizens of the world, desperately need a leader who can substitute “Japan” for “the world” in Ryoma’s famous dictum, and vow to “clean up the world once and for all.”

Membership in the borderless Ryoma Society of America, which I have organized “for a better understanding of modern Japan,” is free and open to all citizens of the world, regardless of geographical location, nationality, or ideology. To learn more, including how to join, visit the Society’s website.

For updates about new content, connect with me on Facebook.

Ryoma: Life of a Renaissance Samurai, the only biographical novel about Sakamoto Ryoma in English, is available on Amazon.com.

Katsu Kaishu’s Lincolnian Dictum

Posted on September 7, 2015 by Romlus Hillsborough

Just as “a house in strife will fall, a country in strife will fall.” (一家不和を生ずれば、一家滅亡す。一国不和を生ずれば、其国滅亡すべし。)

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Abraham Lincoln, June 16, 1858

The peaceful surrender of the fallen shogun’s castle at Edo (modern-day Tokyo), negotiated in the spring of 1868, one day before a scheduled general attack on the capital by forces of the new Imperial government, is “the most beautiful event in Japanese history,” according to Saigo Takamori’s biographer Kaionji Chogoro. It was a result of amicable talks between the military leaders of the opposing sides: Katsu Kaishu representing the shogun, and Saigo, the de facto commander of the Imperial forces. Kaionji’s perceived “beauty” lay in the fact that a devastating civil war was thereby averted, sparing Edo’s population of well over a million from untold misery.

kaishu saigo peace talk

But even after the castle was surrendered, thousands of samurai in Edo refused to yield to draconian treatment by the Imperial government, including confiscation of their landholdings, which would leave them without a livelihood. With a final military showdown imminent, Kaishu sent a letter to Saigo warning him of the dire consequences of the unfair treatment. “Where do you expect them to vent their enmity?” But if the government would treat his people fairly, Kaishu assured Saigo, “the people would happily submit.” But, he ominously warned, just as “a house in strife will fall, a country in strife will fall”–and though Kaishu certainly admired Abraham Lincoln, it is unknown whether or not he was mindful of his famous dictum of a “house divided” uttered a decade earlier.

(Katsu Kaishu is the “shogun’s last samurai” of my Samurai Revolution. The image of Saigo and Kaishu negotiating the surrender of Edo Castle is used in my Samurai Tales, courtesy of Seitoku Kinen Kaigakan.)

For updates about new content, connect with me on Facebook.

Sakamoto Ryoma and International Law

Posted on September 6, 2015 by Romlus Hillsborough

“. . . we are going to have to learn more than just the arts of war.” [将来は武のみを以て立つべからず、学問が必要なり。]

The United Nations states on its website: “The development of International Law is one of the primary goals of the United Nations.” Sakamoto Ryoma, the “Renaissance Samurai” of my historical novel Ryoma, also had a high regard for international law. Ryoma of course never left Japan and his progressiveness is all the more remarkable when you consider that he lived his entire short life in a highly structured, repressive feudal society under the Tokugawa Shogunate, which ruled the country under a policy of isolationism from the outside world for over two centuries.

Which highlights the enigma presented by his pose in the ubiquitous standing photograph, upon which the famous bronze statue is modeled: What does he hold in his right hand, concealed inside his kimono? Is he holding the Smith & Wesson revolver that the political outlaw used to defend himself in the nearly fatal attack by a Tokugawa police force? Or is it a book on international law, by which he defeated his political enemies (representatives of the Tokugawa clan) in a legal battle during the final year of his life? The question underlies the following famous anecdote from Chikami Kiyomi’s 1914 biography, included in my Samurai Tales (Tuttle 2010), which, regardless of its authenticity, informs the development of Ryoma’s character: from an anti-foreign swordsman advocating violent revolution to the founder of Japan’s first trading company and author of a peace plan to prevent civil war:

One day the outlaw Sakamoto Ryoma encountered a friend in the streets of Kyoto. The man wore a long sword at his side, as was popular during those bloody days. Ryoma took one look at the sword, and said, “That sword’s too long. If you get caught in close quarters you won’t be able to draw the blade.” Showing the man his own sword, Ryoma said, “This is a better length.”

Soon after, the man replaced his long sword with a shorter one, and showed it to Ryoma. Laughing derisively, Ryoma produced a pistol from his breast pocket. He fired a shot in the air, and with a wide grin on his face said, “This is the weapon I’ve been using lately.” The two friends met again some time later, when Ryoma took from his pocket a book of international law. “In the future,” he said, “we are going to have to learn more than just the arts of war. I’ve been reading this recently, and it is so very interesting.”

For updates about new content, connect with me on Facebook.

Ryoma: Life of a Renaissance Samurai, the only biographical novel about Sakamoto Ryoma in English, is available on Amazon.com.

Sakamoto Ryoma’s Last Words of Wisdom

Posted on September 5, 2015 by Romlus Hillsborough

A headline in today’s New York Times announces: “Critics Fault Failure of Western Policies in Growing Syrian Refugee Crisis.” Though it “was never any secret that a rising tide of Syrian refugees would sooner or later burst at the seams,” the Times reports, “little was done in Western capitals” to avert the disaster befalling Syrian civilians.

Amid this crisis, I recall words of wisdom of one of the most important men of the “samurai revolution at the dawn of modern Japan.” At the height of the tumult of the revolution, and less than one month since the last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, had announced his intention to abdicate and restore Imperial rule based on an historic peace plan, the author of that plan was engrossed in yet another plan to send men to Ezo (modern-day Hokkaido) in the far north of Japan to settle and exploit that mineral-rich wilderness, train them in the naval sciences, and save them from dying in the revolution.

Sakamoto Ryoma was working on the plan with Hayashi Kenzo, a Hiroshima samurai in the employ of Satsuma. In the eerily prophetic closing to a letter to Hayashi, Ryoma, just four days before his assassination, advised his friend to be very careful for his life, then wrote, “Now is the time for us to act. Soon we must decide on our direction, whether it lead to pandemonium or paradise” (my translation). Would that the current leaders of nations around the world heed Ryoma’s final words of wisdom to at least mitigate the current disaster.

ryoma's letter to Hayashi

(The image of Ryoma’s letter, dated the 11th day of the 11th month of Keio 3 (1867), is from the website of The Sakamoto Ryoma Memorial Museum. It is published in Miyaji Saichiro’s “Sakamoto Ryoma Zenshu” (坂本龍馬全集 = Complete Writings of Sakamoto Ryoma, 3rd edition, 1982). The photo of Sakamoto Ryoma is used in my Samurai Revolution, courtesy of Kochi Prefectural Museum of History.)

For updates about new content, connect with me on Facebook.

Ryoma: Life of a Renaissance Samurai, the only biographical novel about Sakamoto Ryoma in English, is available on Amazon.com.