The Last Samurai E-Book

Mark Ravina

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 539

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

The dramatic arc of Saigo Takamori's life, from his humble originsas a lowly samurai, to national leadership, to his death as a rebelleader, has captivated generations of Japanese readers and nowAmericans as well - his life is the inspiration for a majorHollywood film, The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise andKen Watanabe. In this vibrant new biography, Mark Ravina, professorof history and Director of East Asian Studies at Emory University,explores the facts behind Hollywood storytelling and Japaneselegends, and explains the passion and poignancy of Saigo's life.Known both for his scholarly research and his appearances on TheHistory Channel, Ravina recreates the world in which Saigo livedand died, the last days of the samurai. The Last Samurai traces Saigo's life from his early daysas a tax clerk in far southwestern Japan, through his rise tonational prominence as a fierce imperial loyalist. Saigo was twiceexiled for his political activities -- sent to Japan's remotesouthwestern islands where he fully expected to die. But exile onlyincreased his reputation for loyalty, and in 1864 he was broughtback to the capital to help his lord fight for the restoration ofthe emperor. In 1868, Saigo commanded his lord's forces in thebattles which toppled the shogunate and he became and leader in theemperor Meiji's new government. But Saigo found only anguish innational leadership. He understood the need for a modern conscriptarmy but longed for the days of the traditional warrior. Saigo hoped to die in service to the emperor. In 1873, he soughtappointment as envoy to Korea, where he planned to demand that theKorean king show deference to the Japanese emperor, drawing hissword, if necessary, top defend imperial honor. Denied this chanceto show his courage and loyalty, he retreated to his homeland andspent his last years as a schoolteacher, training samurai boys infrugality, honesty, and courage. In 1876, when the governmentstripped samurai of their swords, Saigo's followers rose inrebellion and Saigo became their reluctant leader. His insurrectionbecame the bloodiest war Japan had seen in centuries, killing over12,000 men on both sides and nearly bankrupting the new imperialgovernment. The imperial government denounced Saigo as a rebel anda traitor, but their propaganda could not overcome his fame and in1889, twelve years after his death, the government relented,pardoned Saigo of all crimes, and posthumously restored him toimperial court rank. In THE LAST SAMURAI, Saigo is as compelling a characteras Robert E. Lee was to Americans-a great and noble warrior whofollowed the dictates of honor and loyalty, even though it meantcivil war in a country to which he'd devoted his life. Saigo's lifeis a fascinating look into Japanese feudal society and a history ofa country as it struggled between its long traditions and thedictates of a modern future.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Note to the Reader

Dates

Names, Romanizations, and Spelling

Measures

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter 1 - “POWERFULLY SENTIMENTAL”

Saig’s Birthplace

Saig’s Lineage

Saig’s Family

Saig’s Education

Saig at Work

Chapter 2 - “A MAN OF EXCEPTIONAL FIDELITY”

A New Daimyo

The Road to Edo

In the Shogun’s Capital

His Lord’s Confidant

Chapter 3 - “BONES IN THE EARTH”

Death, Resurrection, and Exile

Into the Breach

The Ends of the Earth

Chapter 4 - “TO SHOULDER THE BURDENS OF THE REALM”

From Exile to Capital

A Peaceful Warrior

A Web of Alliances

The Road to War

Chapter 5 - “TO TEAR ASUNDER THE CLOUDS”

The End of the Tokugawa Regime

Saigo and Domain Reform

A Reluctant Statesman

The Caretaker Government

The Crisis of 1873

Chapter 6 - “THE BURDEN OF DEATH IS LIGHT”

A Pastoral Statesman

The Impending Crisis

The Long Defeat

Death and Transcendence

Notes

Bibliography

Sources

Index

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Copyright © 2004 by Mark Ravina. All rights reserved

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Ravina, Mark, date.

The last samurai : the life and battles of Saigo Takamori / Mark Ravina.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-471-08970-2 (cloth)

1. Saigåo,Takamori, 1828-1877. 2.Statesmen—Japan—Biography. 3. Japan—History—Restoration, 1853-1870. I. Title.

DS881.5.S2R35 2004

952.03’1’092—dc21

2003006646

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my parents

Note to the Reader

Dates

Prior to 1873 Japan used a lunar calendar with twelve months each of 29 or 30 days for a total year of about 354 days. Intercalary or “leap” months were used to keep this lunar calendar synchronous with the solar year.This adjustment is common with other lunar/solar calendars, such as the traditional Jewish calendar, which also uses “leap” months to reconcile lunar months with the solar year.

Following historiographic convention I have expressed lunar calendar dates in year/month/day format and converted Japanese years, but not months or days, to the Gregorian calendar.Thus, the fifth day of the eleventh lunar month of the sixth year of the Horeki era is rendered as 1756/11/5. The letter i represents an intercalary or “leap” month.The date 1756/i11/5 represents the fifth day of the eleventh intercalary (or twelfth) month of 1756. In converting dates I relied on the tables in Tsuchihashi 1952.

The Japanese year began “late,” and the exact Gregorian date for the Japanese New Year varied between January 21 and February 19.The Meiji government adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1873. January 1, 1873, and 1873/1/1 are the same day.

Names, Romanizations, and Spelling

Japanese words are romanized according to the modified Hepburn system used in Kenkysha’s Japanese-English Dictionary. Japanese nouns do not have plural forms: thus, for example, “shogun” and “samurai” are singular or plural depending on context. I have presented Japanese and Chinese personal names in traditional fashion: family name followed by given name. For Chinese words I have used the pinyin romanization system, but I have included the older Wade-Giles system in parentheses in cases where the older version of the name is likely to be more familiar to readers.

Rendering Japanese names in English presents certain problems. In nineteenth-century Japan, important men commonly used several names. Saig Takamori, for example, was given the name Saig Kokichi at birth, and took the name Takamori at adulthood, but wrote poetry under the name Saig Nansh. Samurai and nobles received new names with promotions in rank.Thus the daimyo Hitotsubashi Yoshinobu became Tokugawa Yoshinobu after his succession as shogun. In addition, Japanese names often have more than one reading, since characters can be read in either Chinese or Japanese fashion.Yoshinobu and Keiki, for example, are simply different readings of the same two characters. In confronting these issues I have put the interest of an American readership foremost. I consistently refer to individuals by the same name, even when this is technically inaccurate.Thus I continue to refer to Hitotsubashi Keiki as such, even in referring to the period after he became shogun and received the new family name of Tokugawa. Further, where there are multiple readings of a given name, I have chosen the most distinctive reading:Thus Keiki instead of Yoshinobu, since Keiki better distinguishes him from his rival Yoshitomi. I also have used unofficial names whenever this seemed easier to remember: thus I refer to the daimyo of Fukui as Matsudaira Shungaku rather than as Matsudaira Yoshinaga. See page 256 for information on accessing variant names for major figures.

Japanese place names present different problems.The suffixes to Japanese place names are often descriptive. Shiroyama, for example, means “mountain of the castle,” so technically the phrase “hills of Shiroyama” is redundant. One can correct for this redundancy by dropping suffixes, but this creates new problems. Anyone looking for Shiroyama needs to look under that name and not Shiro or Mount Shiro. There is no established solution to this problem. I have tried to avoid redundancy, but I have included such terms as “hill” or “temple” when necessary for clarity.

For daimyo domains, there are other issues. Large domains were known by several names: the name of the castle town, the name of the daimyo house, the name of the province, or the name of the region. In this work I have generally identified domains by the name of their castle town with the following important exceptions: Satsuma domain instead of Kagoshima domain; Chsh domain instead of Hagi domain; and Tosa domain instead of Kchi domain.

I have tried to be systematic with the translation of Japanese titles. I have employed the term “lord,” however, to refer to a range of late Tokugawa figures who were powerful samurai rulers but not daimyo.Tokugawa Nariaki, for example, was a dominant force in Mito even after he formally retired in favor of his son. Alternately, Shimazu Hisamitsu never became daimyo at all but effectively ruled Satsuma through his son, the daimyo Shimazu Tadayoshi. In Tokugawa Japan there were specific terms in Japanese for fathers of daimyo and retired daimyo, but in English, for the sake of simplicity, I refer to all of these daimyolike men as “lords.”

The common English translation of Seinan sens is “Satsuma rebellion,” but I feel that this misrepresents both the original Japanese and the war itself. The struggle extended far beyond Satsuma, and, in scale, it was far closer to a civil war than a rebellion. Rather than “Satsuma rebellion,” the term is translated throughout the book as “War of the Southwest.”

All translations from Japanese in the text and notes are mine unless otherwise noted.

For those interested in pronouncing Japanese, the following may be helpful. Japanese vowels are pronounced as in Italian. The macron, or long vowel mark, changes the length of the vowel rather than its sound.Thus the “o” in “Saig,” a family name, and “saigo,” a word meaning “last,” are both pronounced as in “Roma” or “prego.” The “o,” in Saig, however, is held longer and would count as two syllables rather than one in poetry. Doubled consonants such as “kk” are similarly held longer in time.

I have included macrons for all Japanese place names except for Ryukyu, Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto, which are conventionally printed without them in English-language publications. I have also omitted macrons on those common nouns found in standard American dictionaries, such as daimyo (daimy) and sumo (sum).

Measures

I have converted all measurements into U.S. units with the exception of koku, the unit used for samurai stipends. Samurai investitures, including the holdings of daimyo, were measured in koku of rice: one koku equaled 4.95 bushels or 180 liters.

Acknowledgments

I could not have written this book without the help of Haraguchi Izumi, professor of Japanese history at Kagoshima University. Haraguchi was my sponsor for a semester of research at Kagoshima University and gave me unstinting support and encouragement. His knowledge of Satsuma history is encyclopedic, and I often learned as much from a brief chat with him as I did in hours at the library or archives. But I am equally indebted to him for his help on less intellectual affairs. Haraguchi let me stay at his home until I found an apartment, let me use his office on campus, and shared his enormous private library. I am touched by both his hospitality and his interest in my research.

I owe an enormous debt of thanks to two of Haraguchi’s graduate students: Adachi Kichi and Kajiya Sadayuki.Adachi’s research on samurai education in Satsuma and Kajiya’s work on the Ryukyuan community in Kagoshima greatly enhanced my understanding of the world in which Saig lived. Their research and advice pointed me both to important primary sources and recent revisionist scholarship. I owe special thanks to Adachi, who sat with me for many hours as I struggled to render Saigs’ letters into English; his advice and companionship on this endeavor was a true gift.

Thanks also to my old friend Sakurai Katsumi, a specialist in komonjo (diplomatics) at NHK Gakuen. For some fifteen years Sakurai has been my ad hoc tutor in the intricacies of handwritten documents, and for this project he joined me in Kagoshima and Kumamoto to sort through piles of prints (nishikie). Although I suspect that I have been one his slowest students, Sakurai spent hours teaching me the intricacies of hentaigana and then carefully checked my transcriptions. I am thankful for both his professional support and his companionship.

Yamada Shji, director of the Nansh kenshkan, editor of Keiten aijin (a journal devoted to Saig), and an indefatigable local historian, answered my many questions about Saig. I am indebted to him for his time and generosity. Imayoshi Hiromu, director of the Reimeikan (Kagoshima Prefectural Museum of Culture), graciously allowed me to examine, photograph, and reproduce parts of the museum’s enormous holdings. Oguchi Yoshio, curator at the Reimeikan and editor of several volumes of collected primary sources, pointed me to invaluable documents I would otherwise have overlooked.Yoshimitsu Shji of the Reimeikan helped me photograph woodblock prints of the Seinan sens and answered my many queries.

Nozoe Koichi of the Kagoshima City Museum of Art took me seriously when I telephoned trying to find the original of Saig nehan z, a print I had seen reproduced on the promotional calendar of a local bank. In the ensuing search he found not only Saig nehan z but also several prints that changed my understanding of Saig and Saig legends.

Thanks to Matsuo Chitoshi of the Shkshsiekan Museum for his help in finding photographs of Shimazu Nariakira and Shimazu Hisamitsu, as well as Kagoshima Castle and environs. I thank the Shkshsiekan for permission to reprint the photographs.

Ishihara Takenori of the Kumamoto Museum of Science (Kumamoto hakubutsukan) took time from his busy schedule to help me examine and photograph the museum’s extensive collection of woodblock prints. The staff at the Tabaruzaka shirykan took the time to explain the details of breech-loading and muzzle-loading rifles and to answer my many questions about the Battle of Tabaruzaka.

In Kyoto I was given access to several temples and gardens where Saig stayed, strolled, and hid. The administration at Kiyomizudera let me lazily reflect in the garden of the Jjuin, where Gessh was once abbot. tsuka Kantetsu of the Shrenin and a modest, anonymous monk at Shkokuji talked with me at length about the history of their temples. I owe special thanks to Sugii Miyako, mother of the abbot at Tfukuji sokusin, where Saig and Gessh reportedly met and conspired. Despite the stifling Kyoto summer heat, she walked me through the sprawling temple grounds to show me the Satsuma cemetery behind the abbot’s residence.

When I visited Saig’s house on Amami shima I enjoyed the great hospitality of Ry Masako, a descendant of Saig’s wife, Aigana. She shared with me her stories about Aigana and gave me a copy of Tatsug senkyoch no Nansh jitsuwa denkish, a locally published collection of Saig legends. I am indebted also to Yamashita Fumitake, a respected local historian, for answering questions about Amami shima and to Matsuda Hideki, curator at the Amami Museum, for special access to the museum’s collection.

yama Yasuhiro gave me a guided tour of Okinoerabujima and shared the island’s oral history. Hashiguchi Fumio, curator at the Wadomari Museum of Historical Ethnography (Wadomari-ch rekishi minzoku shirykan) on Okinoerabujima gave me valuable advice on island customs and history.

In the Netherlands, Joost Schokkenbroek of the Nederlands Scheepvaartmuseum and Ingeborg Th. Leijerzapf of the Studie en Dokumentatie Centrum voor Fotografie in Leiden helped me tracked down nineteenth-century photographs of Japan and arrange for their reproduction in this book.

This biography is a different and, I hope, a better book because of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Through H-JAPAN and H-ASIA, two moderated Internet listservs devoted to history, I was able to query hundreds of Asia specialists on issues as diverse as early Japanese children’s games and ancient Chinese literati. I am especially indebted, via these sites, to Par Cassel, Helen Hardacre, Earl Kinmonth, Lawrence Marceau, David Pollack, S. A. Thornton, and Donald B. Wagner. Also worthy of note are the Chinese Philosophical Etext Archive, based at Wesleyan University (http://sangle.web.wesleyan.edu/etext/index.html), and Charles Mueller’s site at Ty Gakuen University (http://www.human.toyogakuen-u.ac.jp/~acmuller/index.html). These digital resources allowed me to track down classical references in Saig writings with exceptional ease, and this, in turn, deepened my understanding of Saig’s thought.

Harahata Kenji brought a fresh eye to my translations of Saig’s letters, and I am thankful for his unstinting concern for accuracy, his advice on Tokyo restaurants, and his enduring friendship. At Emory University, Ho Wan-li guided my attempts to render Saig’s Chinese poetry into English. I benefited from both her enthusiasm and her strict standards.

I have had the good fortune to present parts of this work at two scholarly meetings, the Southern Japan Seminar and the Tokyo Ph.D. Kenkykai, where I received helpful suggestions from Izumi Nakayama, Richard Rice, Lucien Ellington, Simon Partner, Paul Dunscomb, and Edward Pratt. Henry Smith of Columbia University generously arranged to have his undergraduate seminar read an earlier draft of this book and allowed me to sit in while they discussed it. My own undergraduates at Emory also read and critiqued earlier versions. I learned much from these student critiques, especially those from Anri Yasuda and Eben Pindyck at Columbia and Minh Le at Emory.

This biography is part of a broader project to reconceptualize the Meiji Restoration. I have presented that research at several academic forums, including a conference at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study; a conference in Istanbul on globalization, cosponsored by Emory University’s Halle Institute and Bogazici University; a meeting in Leiden of the International Institute for Asian Studies; a meeting of the Historical Society in Atlanta; and a Columbia East-Asian Studies Brown Bag seminar. On that longer project I have benefited from the insights of John Boli, Martin Colcutt, Kevin Doak, Richard Doner, Martin Doornbos, Selçuk Esenbel, Karl Friday, Sheldon Garon, David Howell, Franklyn Knight, David Lurie, Marc Miller, Cathal Nolan, Greg Pflugfelder, Luke Roberts, Henry D. Smith, Leila Wice, Willem Wolters, and R. Bin Wong. Thanks also to Sasaki Junnosuke, Ronald Toby, George Wilson, Derek Wolff, Dirk Schumann, Matthew Payne, Cheryl Crowley, Kristin Gorell, and Michael Bellesiles.

Three readers evaluted this manuscript for John Wiley. Their thoughtful comments prodded me to reread, rethink, and rewrite; this is a better book for their keen attention and historical insight. Conrad Totman also read the entire manuscript as a personal favor and gave me much valuable advice. His deep knowledge of Tokugawa politics saved me from numerous errors in fact and interpretation. My editor at John Wiley, Stephen Power, and my copy editor, Kate Gilbert, helped me turn a manuscript into a book.

This book would not have been possible without a research grant from the Japan Foundation and a University Research Council grant from Emory University. I am also thankful for support from the Institute for International and Comparative Studies at Emory.

Nora Levesque and my children,Walker and Zoe, were both inspirations and distractions. I am grateful that they let me blather about the nineteenth century but demanded that I periodically return to the twenty-first.

Statue of Saig in Ueno Park, Tokyo

INTRODUCTION

Where was Saig Takamori’s head? For one frantic morning in 1877 this question consumed the Japanese government.The Japanese imperial army had defeated Saig’s rebellion. They had reduced his army of thirty thousand fearsome, disgruntled samurai to a few hundred diehards.Then, on the morning of September 24, 1877, government forces launched a final attack on the remnants of the rebel army.Within hours, Saig’s forces were utterly destroyed.The War of the Southwest, Japan’s bloodiest conflict in more than three hundred years, was over. But the government’s triumph rang hollow. The imperial army had Saig’s body, but his head was nowhere to be found. Without Saig’s head the government’s victory was incomplete.

Why did Saig’s head matter? In searching for Saig’s head the Japanese army was honoring one of the oldest traditions of the warrior class. The presentation of severed heads was a celebrated part of medieval Japanese warfare, and the great warrior epics are replete with descriptions of formal presentations. Samurai would take the heads of defeated warriors and offer them as tribute to their lord. In major battles the victorious army would collect hundreds of enemy heads. The heads of lesser warriors were collected in piles and displayed as grim trophies. But the severed heads of honored enemies, in legend if not in fact, were treated with deference. A famous case is that of Minamoto no Yoritomo, Japan’s first shogun, and his half brother Minamoto no Yoshitsune. Originally they were allies, but Yoritomo came to distrust his half sibling and ordered his assassination. Yoshitsune was declared a rebel and a traitor, but he was, nonetheless, a noble traitor. According to a well-known tale, in 1189, when Yoritomo’s men took Yoshitsune’s head, they treated it with reverence. Yoshitsune’s head was washed carefully. It was then placed it in a black lacquer box filled with sake for presentation to Yoritomo. When Yoritomo’s officers received the head, they reportedly wept at the tragedy of Yoshitsune’s youthful demise.1

While the presentation of heads was a decisive means of identifying defeated commanders, the greater meaning was of fealty. The severed head of an enemy general symbolized a retainer’s supreme dedication to his lord, representing the risks he had taken in acquiring such a trophy. By presenting such “gifts” a samurai proved himself worthy of his lord’s favor.2 Conversely, by accepting them, a victorious commander demonstrated his superiority to lords whose retainers had been unable to support them successfully in battle.

On September 24, 1877, these medieval rituals had renewed vibrancy and power.This was an ironic, posthumous victory for Saig. In searching for his head, the imperial army was honoring a tradition it had officially renounced. The modern Japanese army had explicitly rejected feudal concerns and symbols.The new Japanese army was based on modern nationalism, not on feudal loyalty. Imperial army soldiers were loyal to king and country, not to regional feudal lords. The 1872 edict that created the conscript army described the samurai tradition as a terrible inequity. Conscription was described as a great egalitarian project:

On the one hand, warriors who have lived without labor for generations have had their stipends reduced and have been stripped of their swords; on the other hand, the four classes of the people [samurai, peasants, artisans, and merchants] are about to receive their freedom. This is the way to restore the balance between the high and the low and to grant equal rights to all. It is, in short, the basis of uniting the farmers and the soldier into one. The people are not the people of former days.They are now equally the people of the empire, and there is no distinction between them in their obligations to the state.3

This new army had no reason to be interested in Saig’s head.The government, in fact, had renounced the public display of heads as an example of the cruelty of the old regime. Imperial officers did not owe the emperor severed heads as symbols of their fealty.

The defeat of Saig should have been an occasion for celebrating the “new” Japan. The army that smashed Saig’s rebellion was an emblem of Japan’s rapid transformation after the imperial restoration of 1868. The imperial army was a modern, national force. It was staffed by conscripted commoners, funded by national taxes, supplied by railroads and steamships, and connected by telegraph.The Japanese government used its most modern and fearsome weapons against the rebels. It employed, for the first time in Japanese history, land mines, sea mines, balloonborne mines, and rockets. Saig’s rebel forces were, by contrast, samurai, fighting with swords.Although they had begun the war armed with cannons and firearms, they had long since exhausted their ammunition. Swords against artillery: the battle could not have been more clearly drawn. The two armies were also fighting for two different visions of Japan.The rebels had neglected to draw up a manifesto, but their implicit cause was the restoration of samurai honor.The new government in Tokyo had abolished the samurai monopoly on military service and government offices. It had challenged one of the principal precepts of the old order: the idea that samurai alone had the courage to serve as warriors and the moral fiber to serve as government officials. The courage of Saig and his men was beyond question.Yet when commoner conscripts and samurai met on the battlefield, the commoners were victorious. Old Japan and new Japan had met in battle. Old Japan had lost.4

Why then the search for Saig’s head? That the modern Japanese army should honor medieval Japanese tradition was scarcely accidental. The defense of samurai tradition was at the core of Saig’s rebellion. Saig and his comrades had failed to restore the samurai estate through force of arms. They were determined, however, to glorify samurai tradition in death. Their demise was an almost choreographed display of courage and resolution. The rebels made their last stand in the hills of Shiroyama behind Kagoshima Castle. The castle had once been the residence of the Shimazu family, the lords of Satsuma domain, now known as Kagoshima Prefecture. But in 1877, it was, in name if not in fact, the property of the Japanese imperial government. Saig was sheltered in a cave in the hills, facing Kagoshima Bay. He had long ago stopped fearing death, but he was now particularly contemplative and peaceful. Reconciled to death and defeat, Saig had spent his last days in reflection, enjoying the beautiful scenery of his birthplace. He was almost lighthearted: exchanging poems with his comrades, playing the Japanese game of go, and making jokes. Saig’s companions shared his mood. On September 22 Saig told his followers that this battle would be their last and urged them to face the end with courage:

As we are determined to fight to our deaths; to fulfill our moral obligations to a noble cause [taigi meibun]; and to die for the imperial court; so let your mind be at peace and be prepared to make this castle your [final] resting place. It is vital to bestir yourselves yet even more, and to be resolved not to leave for posterity any cause for shame.5

On the following night, according to legend, Saig gave leave to all those not prepared to die. The men who stayed were not merely loyal; they also were determined to die with Saig. On the evening of September 23 the rebels celebrated their imminent deaths. Under a bright moon they drank sake, sang songs, and exchanged poems about honor, loyalty, and death.6

The imperial army began its final assault attack at 3:55 A.M. The rebels defended their hilltop positions but were rapidly beaten back by superior force. By 5:30 A.M. the imperial army had destroyed the rebels’ fortifications. The army moved artillery into these positions and began to concentrate fire on the valley below. Saig’s force was reduced to about forty men. At roughly 7:00 A.M. Saig and his troops descended the hill to face the Japanese army and die. Saig was surrounded by his closest and dearest allies: Kirino Toshiaki, Murata Shinpachi, Katsura Hisatake, and Beppu Shinsuke. Halfway down the hill, Saig was shot in the right hip. The bullet passed through his body and exited at his left femur. Saig fell to the ground. According to legend, Saig composed himself and prepared for seppuku, samurai ritual suicide. Turning to Beppu he said, “My dear Shinsuke, I think this place will do. Please be my second (kaishaku).” Saig then calmly faced east, toward the imperial palace, and bent his head. Beppu quickly severed his head with a single, clean stroke and passed the head to Saig’s manservant Kichizaemon, who fled and hid it from the approaching army. The ritualized death of a fallen hero was complete. Saig had died a model samurai. Nishikie, colorful woodblock prints that served as tabloid journals, expanded on this legend in spectacular fashion. Saig was shown, glorious and noble, pushing a sword into his abdomen .7

Saig’s autopsy tells a different story. Shot through the hip, Saig would have been unable to sit calmly and discuss his death with Beppu. And although Saig’s head was severed with a clean cut, there were no wounds to his abdomen. Crippled and probably in shock, Saig had been unable to dispatch himself with traditional samurai honor.These facts did little to alter the legend of Saig’s glorious death.With each retelling, Saig’s composure grew greater, his soliloquy to Beppu longer, and the poignancy of the moment more intense. Because Saig had come to represent samurai valor, his death had to represent samurai tradition. Physiology notwithstanding, tradition demanded that Saig sit on a shattered hip and serenely ask Beppu to help him die. Saig had become a legend, and the Japanese media decided to print the legend, not the man.8

The death of Saig meant the death of an entire conception of the Japanese polity. Saig and his men had fought for the tradition of local independence. Although Saig’s followers could tolerate commoner-soldiers in Tokyo, they could not accept the power of Tokyo to challenge samurai privilege in Satsuma, their home domain. The Tokio Times, writing for an English-language readership, described this transformation in the language of American history:

[T]he idea of national integrity has been stated and established. Widespread throughout the empire it is accepted and appreciated, as never before, that this is one country;—not a bundle of semi-sovereign and jealous powers, but a nation. In this respect the moral of the strife coincides strikingly with the lesson of the civil war in America.There, as here, one of the vital issues was the question of the relation of the state to the central authority, and the result in both cases has vindicated the claims of the latter to be the superior and final arbiter.That this, an “inevitable crisis,” here as in America, has been fairly met and satisfactorily adjusted is matter for congratulation.9

The Hchishinbun focused on the collapse of samurai power:

From the time when the feudal system was replaced by the present form of government, the power of the shizoku or ancient military class has rapidly decreased.The resistance of Saig to the rulers of the empire was an attempt of the shizoku to regain their old status of military control in national affairs. . . . [T]herefore the present victory is not simply a suppression of Saig’s rebellion alone, but is a universal triumph over the old feudal idea of the supremacy of the shizoku everywhere.

The editorial was celebratory: “Are not all the people of our country rejoiced to hear such good news as this?”10

Many Japanese were, in fact, less than congratulatory. Even the Hchi shinbun acknowledged that Saig had “sustained his fame until the last . . . died without shame, and closed his eyes in peace with the full satisfaction of vengeance.”To the government’s dismay, Saig had come to represent all that was commendable in the samurai estate. Despite a formidable government propaganda campaign, Saig remained immensely popular. He was widely seen as the model samurai: loyal, courageous, fearless in the face of death, incorruptible, fair, and compassionate. Saig had held himself above commoners, but as a compassionate leader, not a tyrannical overlord. For Saig, samurai authority demanded benevolent leadership. It allowed no margin for imperiousness. A good samurai ruled not to advance himself but to serve heaven.As servants rather than masters, samurai were obliged to live simple, frugal lives. For Saig, frugality and modesty were moral imperatives. Saig was famous for his love of simple clothing, and even as a high-ranking minister he avoided frock coats and elaborate court dress. According to legend, Saig once visited the imperial palace dressed in a simple cotton kimono and straw sandals.When he was leaving the palace, he was stopped by a guard who assumed that such a shabbily dressed figure must be an intruder. Saig identified himself, but the guard did not believe him until Iwakura Tomomi, a senior court noble, confirmed his identity. In an era of turmoil, Saig’s reputation for simplicity and honesty was enthralling.11

Saig’s appeal extended to his political opponents. One of Saig’s principal defenders was the educator and author Fukuzawa Yukichi, who was Japan’s premier exponent of Western ideas and values. His celebration of Western-style education, An Encouragement of Learning, was the most widely read volume of the 1870s in Japan. Fukuzawa thought Saig’s defense of samurai privilege was reprehensible. But Fukuzawa was still more incensed by the government’s propaganda, which he saw as vilification of a noble man. In passionate defense of Saig, Fukuzawa argued that Saig had rebelled not to seize power but in response to the government’s tyranny. Fukuzawa opposed violence but saw Saig as a victim of autocracy. “We must feel compassion for Saig,” he wrote, “for it was the government that drove him to his death.”12

While the intelligentsia defended Saig in essays, the populace defended him through legend and rumor.According to popular mythology, Saig did not perish on the hills of Shiroyama. Instead he fled to China, where he was collecting his forces for a second attack that would purge Japan of injustice and corruption. By some accounts, Saig was hiding in India, gathering forces for his return.These rumors began soon after Saig’s defeat and continued, unabated, for decades. In 1881 the streets of Osaka were flooded with pamphlets describing Saig’s flight to an island off the coast of India. Readers took these pamphlets seriously. As a local newspaper observed, no one seemed to believe that Saig was actually dead.These Saig survival legends rebounded in 1891.The occasion was Russian crown prince Nikolai’s visit to Japan. Saig, according to the revised legend, was actually in Russia and would return to Japan, with Nikolai, on a Russian battleship. Once back in Japan, Saig would seize power, purge corrupt officials, revise Japan’s unequal treaties with the Western powers, and lead an invasion of Korea. This rumor was so earnestly received that when Saig did not appear,Tsuda Sanz, a Japanese constable, suspected foul play and attacked the crown prince.13

So powerful was Saig’s appeal that he was transformed into a demigod even before his death. Most Japanese newspapers dutifully reported the defeat of Saig the “traitor” and celebrated the victory of the Japanese army. But Saigo’s enormous popularity leaked through the constraints of government censorship. In the popular mind, Saig’s defeat was actually part of his ascent to the heavens. In Osaka, tales of Saig’s ascent to the stars first appeared in August 1877, while Saig was in eastern Kysh. In the early morning of August 2 a comet appeared in the southwestern sky. On August 3 the saka nipp newspaper reported that when examined with a telescope, this “bright star” revealed a portrait of Saig: healthy, fit, and in full imperial army uniform. This story swept through the city, and night after night people stood on their laundry-drying platforms to get a better look at the celestial hero. Woodblock prints soon appeared showing Saig, ensconced in a star, looking down at Japan from the heavens. The prints, true to the newspaper story, showed Saig in formal uniform.This is an intriguing detail: the government had declared Saig a traitor, but they had failed, in the popular imagination, to strip him of rank. The association of Saig with the comet was strengthened by the Japanese predilection for word play, since the period term for comet, hki boshi, also could be read as “rebellious star,” in reference to Saig’s insurrection.14 As news of these “Saig sightings” spread, the rumors grew more intense. By the time the story reached Tokyo, the Saig comet had become an object of veneration, and people were climbing to their roofs to get a better look. There were serious injuries as roof boards collapsed under the weight of Saig watchers.15

Saig in the Heavens

Zokush Saig boshi no zu in the Kagoshima shiritsu bijutsukan

Saigs’ ascent to the heavens was supported by other astronomical phenomena. In August and September 1877 the earth and Mars were in unusual proximity, and Mars glowed with exceptional brightness. On August 19 the Chya shinbun reported that Saig,burning with anger, had been transformed into the planet Mars.That same month the Japanese press reported that the American astronomer Asaph Hall had discovered a satellite around Mars. For Saig loyalists this moon was none other than Saig’s loyal companion Kirino, who had accompanied his friend into the heavens.16 By September the transformation of Saig into Mars was a common theme of popular prints. Edward Morse, an American zoologist and a keen observer of Japanese society, noted these prints in his journal:

In riding through the streets [of Tokyo] one notices the crowds in front of the picture shops, which are bright in color from the war prints. The Satsuma rebellion [Saig’s rebellion] furnishes the themes for the illustrators.The pictures are brilliant in reds and blacks, the figures of the officers in most dramatic attitudes, and “bloody war” is really depicted, though grotesque from our standpoint. One of the pictures represents a star in heaven (the planet Mars), in the centre of which is General Saigo, the rebel chief, beloved by all the Japanese. After the capture of Kagoshima he and other officers committed hara kiri. Many of the people believe he is Mars, which is now shining with unusual brilliancy.17

Another type of Saig image was deeply religious. In Saig nehanz, or nirvana prints, Saig was shown as an enlightened being preparing to transcend physical existence. Still in military dress, he is surrounded by common Japanese—men and women, young and old—who are praying intensely for his return to the corporeal world. These prints were based closely on depictions of the death and transcendence of Siddhartha, the founder of Buddhism. Like the Buddha, Saigo is peaceful as he faces death. Instead of disciples, Saig is encircled by representatives of all walks of life, including shopkeepers, newspaper vendors, geisha, and monks. To cement the parallel with the Buddha, a horse, a dog, a cock, and a snake grieve as well: like Siddhartha, the prints suggest, Saig strove for the salvation of all sentient beings. For a Japanese audience this was roughly equivalent to depicting Saig on the cross, although the Saig nehanz lacked any sacrilegious overtones. Saig could be a Buddha without impugning the dignity of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha.18

Saig Attains Nirvana

Saig nehanz in the Kagoshima shiritsu bijutsukan

These strange transformations were symbolic but powerful. In nineteenth-century Japan the boundary between the world of the living and the world of the dead was porous and indistinct. The souls of powerful men outlasted their physical bodies. Ghosts were serious concerns. Most Japanese believed that the souls of the deceased returned to the world of the living each summer for a brief visit. Japanese villages staged folk dances called bon odori every July or August to welcome these ghosts. Dressed in cotton summer kimono, villagers would dance to the sounds of singing, hand clapping, drums, gongs, and flutes. These festivities can be traced to the ritual appeasement of angry spirits, although the ghosts of farmers were commonly less feared than the ghosts of warriors. In some villages, the souls of the dead, once properly welcomed by their relatives, were thought to join in the dancing.

Powerful souls such as Saig’s were matters of special concern, and a potent soul such as Saig’s could be expected to exact punishment on his enemies. By Japanese tradition such potent ghosts could be appeased only when their enemies enshrined them as gods (kami) and made appropriate ritual offerings. The most famous case of a wrathful kami is Sugawara Michizane (845-903). An administrator, a poet, and a scholar of great distinction, Sugawara rose beyond his birth status to the second-highest post in the imperial administration. In 901 he was falsely accused of treachery by his enemies and was reassigned from the capital, Kyoto, to a demeaning provincial post.There he died two years later, separated from his family and friends. In the years following his death, Sugawara’s enemies began to die under mysterious circumstances: hunting accidents, lightning strikes, and unexplained illnesses.These tragedies were widely attributed to Sugawara’s spirit. Sugawara’s ghost was finally appeased in 947 when, by imperial decree, a shrine was erected to honor the scholar and poet. Sugawara became a god—Tenman daijizai tenjin, commonly known as Tenjin. Tenjin is a strangely dualistic deity. He is widely associated with scholarship.To this day students preparing for high school and college entrance exams commonly purchase amulets at Tenjin shrines. But he also is a potent and wrathful deity, a manifestation of the Thunder Lord (Raik), who smites his enemies.19 Such concerns were clearly on the mind of the artist who created the nirvana print Saig nehanz.The commoners in the print are praying for Saig’s return “even as a ghost,” but the priests, mindful of the dangers of a wrathful spirit, are praying for his soul to find repose so he will not return as a vengeful spirit.

Saig’s transformation into a celestial being was thus a modern gloss on an ancient tradition of ghosts and gods.And if a poet and administrator such as Sugawara could wreak havoc on his enemies, what might Saig’s rivals expect? The Japanese government could not quite admit to fear of Saig’s ghost, but they could not ignore his enduring appeal to the Japanese public. Saig had become a symbol of principled resistance to the imperial government. The Japanese intelligentsia had embraced him as honorable and incorruptible, as a symbol of everything the “new” Japan was not.The public remained enamored of tales of Saig’s survival. Even as a dead man, Saig was dangerous. Rather than fight Saig’s legend, the government ultimately embraced it. On February 22, 1889, Saig was pardoned of all crimes against the state and restored to imperial court rank. His pardon was part of a general amnesty commemorating one of the new state’s crowning achievements: the promulgation of the Meiji constitution on February 11. No longer a rebel, Saig was rapidly transformed into an exemplar of Japanese virtue, celebrated in school textbooks.

The pardon of Saig enshrined his status as Japan’s favorite rebel. Saig was a traitor, but he was now an imperially approved traitor.These contradictory impulses—rebellion and reverence for authority—had long shaped Saig’s life. His strange status as a revered rebel and a loyal traitor had also shaped his death.

Saig’s rehabilitation was years away on the morning of September 24, 1877, but the search for Saig’s head foreshadowed the Meiji government’s change of heart. It is not surprising that Saig’s comrades sought to hide his head.They were determined to deny the Meiji government the triumph of possessing it.What is surprising is the government’s response. Even without Saig’s head, the state could be quite sure that Saig was dead. They had a huge cadaver (Saig was nearly six feet tall) with a distinctive scar on the right arm: this was certainly Saig’s body. But the Meiji state was fighting against a legend who had, in the popular press, begun his ascent to heaven even before his death. A physical victory against Saig’s body was incomplete without a symbolic victory over the Saig legend. The search for Saig’s head was emblematic of the government’s deep ambivalence toward the legacy of samurai tradition and its confusion over what to revere and what to vilify. To understand the search for Saig’s head is, at one level, to understand how Saig came to represent samurai valor and how the Meiji government grappled with the samurai culture. Where, then, was Saig Takamori’s head on September 24, 1877, and why did it matter? Those are the questions we will now seek to answer.

Chapter 1

“POWERFULLY SENTIMENTAL”

Saigo’s Early Years in Satsumaa

Saig’s Birthplace

Saig was born in Kagoshima, a castle town and the capital of Satsuma domain. Kagoshima was, depending on one’s perspective, a primitive backwater or Japan’s gateway to the world. Viewed from the shogun’s capital of Edo (now Tokyo) or the imperial capital of Kyoto, Kagoshima was remote in the extreme: it lay at the far southwestern corner of Kysh,the southernmost of the four main islands of Japan. sumi, one of the three provinces that comprised Satsuma domain, means “big corner”: if Kyoto and Edo were the center of Japan, then Satsuma was at the periphery. The overland route from Edo to Kagoshima was nearly a thousand miles; the speediest couriers took two weeks to bring news from Edo. Natives of Satsuma spoke a dialect of Japanese virtually unintelligible to the rest of Japan. Popular literature reinforced this image of Kagoshima as primitive. In his famous collection of erotic fiction, Ihara Saikaku described Satsuma as “remote and backward.”1

On the other hand, Satsuma was a link to the outside world. Before the 1630s traders coming up from China often made their first stop in Satsuma, and the domain became an entry point for new goods and technologies. The Japanese word for sweet potato, for example, is satsumaimo, or “Satsuma potato”: the tuber was brought to Japan from China through Satsuma. (In Satsuma, however, term is karaimo, or “Chinese potato.”)2 Guns also first arrived in Japan through Satsuma, specifically the island of Tanegashima in 1543. An early Japanese term for matchlock was tanegashima, reflecting the weapon’s point of arrival.When nineteenth-century students from Satsuma produced one of the first Japanese-English dictionaries, satsuma jisho, or “Satsuma dictionary,” was briefly a term for Japanese-English dictionary.

Satsuma’s extensive contact with the world outside Japan had a political dimension as well as a geographical one. The domain had a special relationship with the kingdom of the Ryukyus, now the Japanese prefecture of Okinawa. Satsuma conquered the Ryukyuan capital of Naha in 1609 and thereafter demanded tribute from the Ryukyuan kings as a sign of their subjugation. The daimyo of Satsuma, the Shimazu house, used this relationship to elevate their status within Japan: they were the only daimyo house to receive an oath of fealty from a foreign king. Externally, however, the Shimazu took great pains to conceal their power over the Ryukyus. The great value of the kingdom was as an economic bridge to China. According to Chinese diplomatic protocol, the Ryukyuan king was a Chinese vassal, and Satsuma had no desire to imperil trade by challenging this relationship. Thus Japanese officials in the Ryukyus concealed all signs of their presence before the arrival of Chinese diplomatic personnel: they left the capital, Naha, for a nearby village and ordered the Ryukyuans to hide all records of their presence. Chinese diplomats suspected that something was afoot but never disputed the arrangement.3 The Shimazu were not alone in handling foreign trade. The Tokugawa shogunate entrusted trade with Japan’s trading post in Pusan, Korea, to the S house of Tsushima domain, and the Matsumae house of Matsumae domain managed trade with the northern frontier of Ezo. But the Shimazu’s position was uniquely prestigious: the shogunate ordered them to “rule” over the Ryukyuan kingdom.4

Satsuma and major domains, c. 1850

In Kagoshima itself there was a sizable Ryukyuan embassy, known as the Ryukyukan, which handled diplomatic affairs between the governments. The Ryukyuan community was probably never more than a few hundred people, but it had a marked impact on the city. A nineteenth-century visitor from Edo reported that people took no notice of Ryukyuans but greeted travelers from Edo with quiet laughter.5 Small as it was, the Ryukyukan community was nevertheless one of the largest foreign communities in Japan. In the seventeenth century the Tokugawa shoguns had drastically restricted travel to and from Japan. Japanese who left Japan were barred under penalty of death from ever returning, and oceangoing ships were prohibited. Dutch and Chinese merchants were restricted to Nagasaki.6

The Shimazu were distinctive in other ways as well. Not only did they receive foreign ambassadors, but also they were the oldest surviving warrior house in Japan. Few daimyo families could comfortably trace their lineage past the 1500s. Most of the daimyo of the early modern era rose from lower status during the intense civil warfare of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Even the ancestors of the Tokugawa shoguns were but a minor warrior family in the 1540s. The Shimazu, by contrast, traced their lineage as warlords back to Japan’s first shogunate, the Kamakura regime (1185-1333). In 1185 Minamoto Yoritomo, Japan’s first shogun, appointed Koremune Tadahisa as a military steward (geshi) over Shimazu sh, a large investiture in what is now Kagoshima Prefecture. In 1197 he promoted Tadahisa to military governor (shugo) of the province, and the following year Tadahisa changed his family name to match his investiture. This is where the Shimazu daimyo began their genealogies. Remarkably, historians have traced the Shimazu back even farther, to an imperial courtier family in the sixth century and, with less certainty, to an émigré noble house from the Korean peninsula. But as daimyo preferred warrior ancestors to courtiers,Tadahisa became the official progenitor of the Shimazu line.7

This extraordinary genealogy shaped the thinking of Saig and his cohort. Satsuma samurai could take unique pride in serving the Shimazu, who had ruled the same territory uninterruptedly for more than six centuries. The Shimazu, in fact, proved more durable than the shoguns who invested them: they developed an independent base of power and survived the collapse of the Kamakura shogunate in the 1330s. The second shogunate, known as the Muromachi or Ashikaga shogunate, confirmed Shimazu authority over Satsuma. After the collapse of the Ashikaga regime in the 1400s, Japan deteriorated into pervasive civil war, and the Shimazu, like many daimyo, expended great effort suppressing obstreperous vassals. Unlike many daimyo, however, the Shimazu emerged victorious, and they consolidated and expanded their territories. In the unification struggles of the late 1500s, the Shimazu opposed Japan’s preeminent warlords. The Shimazu fought against Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the 1580s and lost their territorial gains in northern Kysh.They also opposed the founder of Japan’s third shogunate, Tokugawa Ieyasu. In the great Battle of Sekigahara in 1600, the Shimazu and the Tokugawa fought on opposing sides: Tokugawa Ieyasu led the eastern alliance, while the Shimazu fought with the western alliance. The Tokugawa won. Ieyasu’s appointment as shogun in 1603 confirmed his supremacy and inaugurated the 265-year reign of the Tokugawa dynasty, Japan’s most durable shogunate. To reward his allies and enhance his own holdings, Ieyasu seized millions of acres of land, taking all or part of his enemies’ territory. Remarkably, Ieyasu left Shimazu holdings untouched. Although defeated, the Shimazu were still a formidable enemy, and Ieyasu had reason to avoid a fight. Furthermore, because Kagoshima was nearly a thousand miles from the shogun’s new capital, Edo, the Shimazu were unlikely to attack the shogunate. 8 The result was a compromise. The Shimazu recognized the supremacy of the shogunate and performed the appropriate acts of obeisance, such as signing an oath of loyalty in blood. For his part, Ieyasu confirmed Shimazu control over their traditional lands in southwestern Kyh.

The Tokugawa settlement of the early 1600s still affected politics two centuries later. Having opposed the Tokugawa in 1600, the Shimazu were labeled tozama daimy, or “outside” lords. Tozama lords were barred from holding posts in the shogun’s administration and excluded from decisions in national politics. Most of the great lords of the southwest were tozama lords, as were most of the daimyo with large holdings. Daimyo who had won Ieyasu’s trust before 1600 were commonly enfiefed as fudai daimy, or vassal lords.This distinction between fudai and tozama lords became a cornerstone of daimyo politics: even in Saig’s day, key shogunal offices were reserved for fudai.9 The fact that daimyo with important shogunal posts were far more invested in the strength of the shogunate than were tozama lords shaped Japan’s response to imperialism in the 1850s and 1860s. Many tozama lords pushed for a power-sharing arrangement that would give them a voice in international affairs. Fudai lords were far more wedded to traditional power structures and supported the shogun’s exclusive authority over diplomatic matters. The Shimazu were arguably the quintessential tozama lords.They did not openly challenge the shogunate until the 1860s, but they were remarkably independent in civil and diplomatic affairs. The Shimazu thought of themselves less as warlord vassals of the Tokugawa than as Tokugawa equals who had lost a key battle. During the last years of the Tokugawa shogunate, the Shimazu grew particularly brazen, sending an independent delegation to the 1867 International Exhibition in Paris that represented not Japan, but the kingdom of Satsuma and the Ryukyus.

Today the Shimazu no longer rule, but they remain a distinct presence in Kagoshima.The Shimazu descendants are active in tourism, including taxis, hotels, and museums, so any visitor to Kagoshima is likely to meet an employee of the Shimazu. The seal of Kagoshima City is clearly derived from the Shimazu family crest. Nowhere else in Japan are the descendants of feudal warlords as visible in contemporary daily life.

Saig’s homeland, the Shimazu family territories, was a huge domain, encompassing not only the province of Satsuma but also the province of sumi and the southwestern part of the province of Hyga. With these three provinces, known collectively as Satsuma domain, the Shimazu ruled the entire southern tip of Kysh,an area of more than thirty-five hundred square miles.The Shimazu holdings were also among the most populous in early modern Japan: in the 1870s roughly 760,000 people lived in Satsuma domain. Only three domains had larger populations: Kaga, Nagoya, and Hiroshima. The Tokugawa shoguns commonly ranked daimyo by the official rice harvest; by this standard the Shimazu had the second-largest investiture in Japan, smaller only than the Maeda holdings in Kaga.10

In the center of Kagoshima City lay Tsurumaru Castle, a strikingly unimpressive fortress built in 1602 as a residence for the daimyo Shimazu Iehisa. Tsurumaru was more a villa than a fortress. The castle had an inner keep (honmaru) and outer enceinte (ni-no-maru), but nothing in either section was designed to repel a sustained attack. Although the castle originally had steep stone walls and a small moat, it lacked the high, multistory towers common in castles of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Shirasagi Castle in Himeiji, for example, now a tourist landmark because of its striking beauty, has a towering six-story keep and three small keeps. Moats, turrets, steep walls, and battlements surround the castle. Routes into Shirasagi are circuitous and deceptive: the inner passages form a maze of blind alleys. By contrast, Tsurumaru’s fortifications were both minimal and poorly maintained. A mid-eighteenth-century report on the castle observed, with some exaggeration, “although diagrams of the keep and enceinte show turrets, walls and moats, these do not actually exist.” Access to the castle was surprisingly straightforward: a small bridge led directly from Kagoshima City, across the moat, and into the enceinte.11

Why did Iehisa build such a simple and poorly defended castle? Today a plaque in front of the castle ruins tells the visitor that the Shimazu did not need an elaborate castle because “the people are their fortress.” This is an appealingly populist explanation, but it is seriously misleading. Kagoshima was defended, against both invaders and its own peasants, by a dense network of castles: in Saigo’s day more than a hundred small fortresses, called toj, dotted the landscape. Tsurumaru Castle had no defenses because they were not needed: with fortresses throughout the domain, a large central castle would have been redundant.The Shimazu system of rural fortresses was technically a violation of Tokugawa policy, which in 1615 had limited each daimyo to one castle. The Shimazu ignored the order, and the Tokugawa chose not to contest their decision.The Shimazu network of castles meant that the Satsuma countryside was under constant samurai surveillance. In most domains the vast majority of samurai lived in the daimyo’s castle town, and peasant villages enjoyed a margin of self-governance. In Satsuma, however, thousands of low-ranking samurai lived in the countryside, and even the lowliest details of village life were part of samurai rule.12

Tsurumaru Castle (Tsurumarujo)

Kagoshima was a sizable city, with a nineteenth-century population of roughly seventy thousand.The vast majority of its residents, perhaps 70 percent, were samurai and their families.13 Like most warrior capitals, the city of Kagoshima was explicitly hierarchical in its layout. At the center was the daimyo’s castle, the political and administrative heart of the domain. Nearest the castle were government offices and the residences of the domain’s elite retainers. Next were the residences of lower retainers: the government’s middle managers and staff. Last were commoners’ residences, which banded the city to the north and south. There lived the artisans and merchants whose activities made urban life possible. In classic castle towns, such as the shogun’s capital of Edo, the city’s hierarchy resembled a series of concentric rings centered on the lord’s castle. Kagoshima resembled this model, but was constrained by a topography that bounded the city to the west by Mount Shiroyama and to the east by Kink Bay.The mountain and the sea pressed the standard pattern of rings into a series of bands.

Immediately in front of the castle lay a broad avenue known as Sengoku baba, or, in loose but effective translation, “Millionaire Avenue.” Sengoku, or one thousand koku, referred to the annual income of the residents. A koku was just under five bushels, and one thousand koku was, by any measure, a lot of rice. Some residents of Sengoku baba had investitures in excess of ten thousand koku. Had these men been direct vassals of the shogun, rather than vassals of the Shimazu, they would have ranked as daimyo in their own right and enjoyed direct audiences with the shogun. The residents of Sengoku baba were the daimyo’s senior advisers. They had storied ancestries and privileged access to the daimyo. Some were the lord’s distant cousins, descendants of the younger brothers of earlier daimyo, whose residences reflected their wealth and power. The typical residence in Sengoku baba was a large compound surrounded by stone or stucco walls.This housed not only the retainer and his families but also his aides and servants. In Satsuma, as in many domains, the samurai elite was virtually a class unto itself.While Saig’s parents struggled to keep clothes on their growing children, the residents of Sengoku baba agonized over the details of castle protocol and the architecture of their carp ponds.14

Just south of this inner district, along the banks of the Kotsuki River, lay the residences of middle and lower retainers. These were the men who staffed the daimyo’s government, drafting correspondence, compiling government edicts, tallying tax receipts, and implementing the policies formulated by their superiors. Lower and middling retainers lived in one of four wards: Arata-machi, Korei-machi, Uenosono-machi, and Kajiya-machi. Arata, Krei, and Uenosono Wards lay southwest of the K