Until my Samurai Revolution, the biography by E. Warren Clark, Katz Awa: “The Bismarck of Japan” or the Story of a Noble Life (New York: B.F. Buck, 1904), was the only English-language account (in book form) of Katsu Kaishū (referred to as Katz Awa by Clark), published five years after Kaishū’s death. Clark’s book is more of a hagiographical sketch than a true biography. “HE IS THE MAN (sic) I love – the man to whom personally I owe more gratitude and respect than to any other individual I ever met,” Clark writes of Kaishū. A devout Christian, Clark was one of three American teachers invited to Japan by Kaishū (soon to be appointed minister of navy) in 1871, three years after fall of Bakufu, to help establish scientific schools. Clark excerpts Last Days of the Bakufu, the English translation of Bakufu Shimatsu, written by Kaishū for Clark’s benefit. Regarding Kaishū’s all-important role in the civil war of 1868, Clark asserts that the “surrender of military power on the part of [last shogun] Tokugawa Keiki [Tokugawa Yoshinobu], acting solely on Katz Awa’s advice, was voluntary, patriotic, and immediate.” Contrasting Japan’s handling of its greatest internal conflict with America’s Civil War, Clark lauds Kaishū for having “secured by one stroke of self-abnegation and self-sacrifice conditions of a national unity which we at the same epoch in the ‘sixties’ were struggling to attain in the United States at the cost of nearly a million lives.” Numerous inaccuracies in Clark’s book include the date and city of Kaishū’s birth, and claim that Kaishū served as “president of the naval training school at Nagasaki . . . about a year before . . . Perry’s advent with those barbarian ships” – though he actually served as head of naval cadets at the school several years after Perry’s arrival. Clark also incredulously claims Katsu Kaishū, an exemplar of an ancient society and culture to which Christianity was anathema, accepted Christian faith near end of life.

(In 1860, Katsu Kaishū, “the shōgun’s last samurai of Samurai Revolution,” traveled to San Francisco as captain of the warship Kanrin Maru, the first Japanese vessel to reach the United States. The above photo was taken at that time. The scans below are from a September 24, 1894 article about Clark’s visit to San Francisco in a local newspaper.)

Part II of Samurai Assassins is the first in-depth biographical treatment in English of Takéchi Hanpeita, charismatic leader of the Tosa Loyalist Party and mastermind of “divine punishment,” which wreaked terror on the streets of Kyōtō. Takéchi’s important role in the “samurai revolution” is covered in detail, including his meteoric rise to power and his sudden arrest and imprisonment. I referred to Takéchi’s journals, contained in an early biography published in 1912; and more heavily to his letters from jail to his wife and cohorts on the outside. To the best of my knowledge, Takéchi’s letters have rarely, if ever, been used by Western writers. Following is an excerpt:

At the end of the Second Month, Takéchi wrote home about his new cellmate, a samurai named Itō Reihei, whom he referred to as “shit bug” (kuso mushi). Itō had been arrested for seducing a woman and attempting to run away with her, behavior which Takéchi would not condone. But from Takéchi’s letters home it seems that the two men became unlikely friends during the next few months, which they spent together in the same cell, with Itō, perhaps starstruck by the famous Loyalist Party leader, regularly fixing Takéchi’s hair. And so “I don’t have to get my hands dirty,” which was “the only good” thing about the “shit bug.”

Amid the current toxic political climate in the United States, I remember the following anecdote (cited from Samurai Assassins, Chapter 16, without footnotes) involving Saigō Takamori and Sakamoto Ryōma, which provides insight into the magnanimity of the former:

Hirao relays an anecdote that goes a long way to illustrate Saigō’s affection and even reverence for Ryōma. In Keiō 1/5 (1865) Ryōma traveled to Saigō’s native Kagoshima to lay the groundwork for the Satsuma-Chōshū Alliance, during which time Ryōma stayed at Saigō’s home. According to the story, which Hirao heard directly from Saigō’s sister-in-law, one day Ryōma asked Saigō’s wife, Itoko, if he could borrow Saigō’s “oldest loincloth,” i.e., underwear. As Hirao interjects, Ryōma, a rōnin without a source of income, probably didn’t have the money to buy such things. So Itoko gave Ryōma exactly what he asked for; and when her husband returned home and she told him about it, he was angered: “Don’t you know that he’s ready to die for the country?” he said, and instructed her to change the “old loincloth for the newest one” he had. Recalling the story years later, Itoko said that it was the only time she had ever seen her husband so angry.