Samurai Revolution is the only full-length biography of Katsu Kaishū in English.

The cover of my book Shinsengumi: The Shogun’s Last Samurai Corps depicts corps commander, Kondo Isami, at the desperate Battle of Katsunuma against Imperial forces the month before the shogun’s castle at Edo would be surrendered to the Imperial government.  Below is an excerpt from my book without footnotes. (Just prior to this the Shinsengumi had been renamed Koyochinbutai (“Pacification Corps”)).

On March 4, [1868] . . . they marched through a heavy snowstorm. On the following day, as they reached the summit of Sasago Pass, the most forbidding point along the road, word arrived that Kofu Castle had fallen to some three thousand imperial forces led by Itagaki Taisuké of Tosa. Had Kondo’s corps arrived one day earlier, the castle might have been theirs for the taking.

Kondo attempted to boost his troops’ morale by lying to them that six hundred reinforcements from Aizu would arrive the next morning. Hijikata rushed back to Edo to get reinforcements from among the hatamoto [samurai in service of the shogun]. Meanwhile, Kondo led his corps westward across the snowy mountainous terrain. Numerous corpsmen, despairing of victory, deserted. They reached the town of Katsunuma, five miles east of Kofu, on the same day, March 5. Only 121 corpsmen remained. In the mountains they erected a makeshift fortification, where they positioned their two cannon. In the town they constructed a barrier. In the mountains and the roadway they lit fires to intimidate the enemy, and waited for Hijikata’s return.

Far from being intimidated, some 1,200 enemy troops attacked at noon the following day.

Having been trained in modern warfare, they had the clear advantage over Kondo’s corps – both in sheer number and superiority in arms. Kondo’s men, meanwhile, particularly those who had been in Kyoto, enjoyed the advantage of experience in battle, but not in the use of artillery. Amid the smoke from the nearby fires, the Pacification Corps attempted to defend with their two cannon. There was not a man among them, however, with expertise in firing these large guns. In their inexperience, they misfired. As the enemy pounded them with heavy artillery fire, they had to resort to their rifles. The enemy closed in and charged with drawn swords. Sato Hikogoro’s peasant militia, consisting of twenty-one men, fought fiercely against the charge, as did the warriors of the Pacification Corps. Kondo’s men could not see for the smoke in their eyes. After two hours of fighting they had no alternative but to scatter into the surrounding mountains, and eventually retreat to Edo in defeat. In the Battle at Katsunuma, the Pacification Corps suffered eight dead and more than thirty wounded. Only one of the enemy was killed, and twelve wounded. [end excerpt]

Some readers have wondered about the original artwork on the book cover. Below are some details, from the websites of the National Diet Library and 西南戦争錦絵美術館 (Seinansenso Nishikie Bijutsukan), an art museum themed on the Satsuma Rebellion. (The painting is used on the book cover courtesy of Masataka Kojima, curator of the Kojima Museum.)

Title: 勝沼駅近藤勇驍勇之図 (Katsunuma-eki Kondo Isami Gyoyu no Zu)

Artist: 月岡芳年　(Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, 1839-1892; photo below)

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Katsu Kaishū is the “shogun’s last samurai” of Samurai Revolution. I introduce him in the Prologue as follows:

[In early 1868, in the wake of the collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu], Katsu Kaishū, who had risen through the ranks by force of character and a keen and creative mind, was in command of the Tokugawa military. He had at his disposal a fleet of ships and thousands of troops raring to attack the enemy. But just who was this multifaceted, enigmatic man upon whom the deposed shōgun rested his life and the fate of his family and indeed the entire country? Unlike [last shogun Tokugawa] Yoshinobu’s other advisors, he hailed neither from a noble house of feudal lords charged for generations with the Bakufu’s highest offices, nor from the privileged families of Tokugawa samurai whose sons traditionally filled the most important magistracies and commissionerships. Born to the humblest of samurai families in service of the shōgun, he was at once the consummate samurai and streetwise denizen of downtown Edo; an expert swordsman who refused to draw his sword even in self-defense; a statesman who commanded the respect of allies and foes alike; an inviolable outsider within the shōgun’s regime; an iconoclast, historian, prolific writer, and creator of the Japanese navy. And though his loyalty to the Tokugawa was unsurpassed, he was nevertheless a friend and ally of men who had overthrown the government.

[The photo of Katsu Kaishū was taken at the British Legation in Yokohama by Ernest Satow, secretary to Sir Harry Parkes, the British minister to Japan, around the time the shogun’s castle was surrendered to the new Imperial government in the spring of 1868. “I was so very sleepy at the time,” Kaishū recalled years later. “But they dragged me over there. Satow took it, because, as he said, ‘You’re going to be killed.’” The photo is from the family album of Professor Douglas A. Stiffler, a great-great grandson of Katsu Kaishū, who has given me permission to use it.]

Samurai Revolution Miniseries Project

During the first two months of 1866, around two years before the fall of the Tokugawa Bakufu, the anti-Bakufu rebels in Chōshū, led by the indomitable young samurai Takasugi Shinsaku, ousted the ruling conservatives in a bloody civil war. As leader of Chōshū’s powerful army, Takasugi envisaged Chōshū as becoming “the most powerful and wealthy nation among the five great continents.”

Chōshū (modern-day Yamaguchi Prefecture) was one of two samurai clans most responsible for overthrowing the Bakufu and bringing about the Meiji Restoration. The other was its rival Satsuma (modern-day Kagoshima Prefecture). After the United States, Great Britain, France and others forced unfair trade treaties on the thus far isolated country in 1858, samurai from Chōshū, Satsuma, and other parts of Japan, most notably Tosa (modern-day Kochi Prefecture and home domain of Sakamoto Ryōma), called for a “strong military and rich nation” under a newly restored monarchy to fend off Western imperialism. They developed a military strong enough to overthrow the Tokugawa Bakufu, which, under the shogun, had ruled the country for over two and a half centuries.

For Takasugi “the five great continents” were synonymous with “the world,” suggesting his belief that Japan’s future lay with Chōshū. And to a great extent he was right. Former samurai of Chōshū and Satsuma would control the Meiji government into the twentieth century. During its infancy, the new Meiji government was dominated by the triad of Saigō Takamori, Ōkubo Toshimichi, and Kido Takayoshi (formerly Katsura Kogorō), and the Court nobles Sanjō Sanétomi and Iwakura Tomomi. After the deaths of Saigō, Ōkubo, and Kido within one year of each other (Kido of illness in May 1877, Saigō on the battlefield that September, Ōkubo by assassination in May 1878), the Japanese government continued to be dominated by Satsuma and Chōshū men, including Itō Hirobumi, Inoué Kaoru and Yamagata Aritomo. Itō, architect of the Meiji Constitution of 1889, was the Meiji government’s first prime minister (from 1885 to 1888). Of the first fourteen cabinets (1885 to 1912), eight were led by former Chōshū samurai (Itō, four times Yamagata Aritomo, twice; Katsura Tarō, twice), and three by men of Satsuma (Kuroda Kiyotaka, once; Matsukata Masayoshi, twice). And while Katsu Kaishū, “the shōgun’s last samurai” of my Samurai Revolution, headed up the Imperial Navy in its nascent years, after Saigō’s death the Imperial Army was dominated by Yamagata, though Satsuma’s naval leadership was stronger than Chōshū’s. It is noteworthy that current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is a descendent of Chōshū samurai.