Tokugawa Nariaki was the ninth daimyo of Mito and father of the last shōgun Tokugawa Yoshinobu. He was a reactionary who despised everything Western. He advocated answering foreign demands on Japanese sovereignty with cannon fire and the tempered razor-sharp steel of the Japanese sword. His Mito domain, the cradle of Imperial Loyalism, attracted Imperial Loyalists throughout Japan; and it was Nariaki who coined the Loyalists’ war cry of Sonnō-Jōi—Revere the Emperor and Expel the Barbarians (abbreviated as Son-Jō). (excerpted, in part, from Samurai Revolution, without footnotes)

As I wrote in a recent post, in 1841 Nariaki established the famed Kōdōkan within the precincts of Mito Castle, as the official school of Mito Han. The famous “Sonjō” tablet (below) hangs on the back wall of a room beyond an entrance to the Kōdōkan.

[The photograph of Nariaki is from the Tokugawa Museum in Mito.]