SAKAMOTO RYOMA AND THE MEIJI RESTORATION Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration BY MARIUS B. JANSEN PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS 1961 Copyright © 1961 by Princeton University Press ALL RIGHTS RESERVED L.C. Card 61-6909 Publication of this book has been aided by the Ford Foundation program to support publication, through university presses, of works in the humanities and social sciences. Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey for Jean CONTENTS Introduction ix I. Sakamoto's Japan 3 1. The Tokugawa Setting 3 2. Tosa 20 3. Tosa at Mid-Century 36 II. The Response to the West 51 1. The Tokugawa Response 51 2. Reforms in Tosa 67 3. The Education of Sakamoto Ryoma 77 III. The Loyalist Years 93 1. The Shishi Type and Ideal 95 2. The Tosa Loyalist Party 104 3. The Shishi in National Politics 124 4. The Decline of Loyalist Extremism 137 IV. Service with Katsu 153 1. Katsu Rintaro 154 2. Sakamoto and Katsu 160 3. The Hyogo Naval Academy 166 4. The Dismissal of Katsu 178 V. The Satsuma-Choshu Alliance 185 1. Saigo Takamori and Satsuma 186 2. Nakaoka Shintaro and Choshu 195 3. From Shishi to Statesmen 204 4. The Alliance 211 VI. The Kaientai 223 1. The Attack in the Teradaya 224 2. The Second Choshu Expedition 232 3. Changes in Tosa 241 4. The Nagasaki Scene 252 5. Reinstatement and Support for the Kaientai 259 vii CONTENTS VII. The Eight-Point Program 271 1. The Advantage of Tosa Support 272 2. The Shogun Yoshinobu (Keiki) 278 3. The Kyoto Conference 286 4. Program for a New Government 294 5. The Icarus Affair 304 VIII. Restoration 312 1. Y6d6's Petition to Keiki 312 2. Preparations for War 317 3. The End of the Bakufu 326 4. Sakamoto and the New Government 335 5. The Warriors Become Kami 342 IX. The Restoration in Tosa 347 1. The Stages of Response to the West 347 2. The Leaders and their Aims 355 3. The Problem of Class Interest 368 Chronological Tables 379 List of Works Cited 382 A Note on Sources 389 Biographical Notes 401 Index 417 Illustration Section follows page 36 Map follows page 3 viii INTRODUCTION ^HN ASIA, as in the Western world, the middle decades of the g N/ nineteenth century were filled with unrest and violence. \^r Movements were in progress whose end result was fully as momentous as were the ending of slavery in America and serfdom in Russia. But the differences were equally important, for the Asian developments were speeded and affected in varying degree by the intervention of the West. Even where, as in Japan, the West im pinged on traditional society with no thought of conquest, its evi dence of the vitality of progress, constitutionalism, and industriali zation provided new formulations which attracted or repulsed men who wanted change. In India the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857-1859 brought on the full measure of English control. In China the great Taiping Rebellion of 1850-1864 utilized a bizarre version of Chris tian doctrine to try to drive out the Manchu rulers and erect a new theocratic and communist state. The Taipings failed to win the support of the Chinese elite, but their military successes produced a setting in which foreign technology first became acceptable, because it was essential, to Chinese leaders. At mid-century Japan too faced the Western threat. Japan's crisis came after those of India and China, and foreign conquest was never as real a danger as Japanese leaders thought. The decade between the negotiation of a commercial treaty with Townsend Harris in 1858 and the fall of the military government of the Tokugawa shogun in 1867 saw animosities and tensions that had long been present burst into flame, however, and the intellectual and political ferment of those years produced the Meiji Restora tion. The Restoration led to a unified national state which struggled to achieve international equality and leadership in Asia. The suc cesses of the Japanese leaders had an effect on neighboring Asian societies as stimulating as was that of revolutionary France on Europe. Sun Yat-sen, K'ang Yu-wei, Kim Ok-kiun, Emilio Agui- naldo, Subhas Chandra Bose, and many others dreamed of creat ing in their own countries something of the drive and unity that had first established in Japan the equality of Asian with European strength and ability. Many of these men credited the Japanese achievements to the colorful and dedicated nationalists who had led the Restoration movement, and as a result the Restoration ix INTRODUCTION activists became heroes for Asians who aspired to approximate their deeds. Within Japan the Meiji Restoration leaders also served as examples of a new and ideal type in politics: that of the idealis tic, individualistic, and courageous patriot who gave his all for the Imperial cause—the shishi. In the days before World War II in Japan the young officers of the armed services laid claim to this tradition as they flouted conventional standards of morality and discipline in their efforts to carry out a twentieth century "Showa Restoration." In view of the importance and the interest of the Japanese revo lution, it is astonishing that Western scholarship has given it so little attention. In recent years Western writers, following the lead of social scientists in Japan, have concerned themselves more with the "motive forces" and with the significance of the Restoration than with the changes themselves and the men who helped bring them about. These are certainly vital concerns, but they ought properly to come after, and not before, descriptions of the events themselves. In this book I have chosen to tell the Restoration story by ex amining the career and thought of Sakamoto Ryoma and, to a lesser extent, Nakaoka Shintaro. Both men were from Tosa, one of the fiefs that played an important role in Restoration politics. Both were of relatively low rank, and neither was at all at home in the circles of Japan's "Western experts." Tosa, their home, contributed to, but did not lead the Restoration process, so that regional power politics and ambition were at first less involved in their education in world affairs than was the case with their counterparts in more powerful fiefs. Sakamoto and Nakaoka were murdered shortly after the shogun's resignation in 1867, and our view of their Res toration activities is not colored by their subsequent eminence or failure. Nevertheless they had important and exciting roles in the Restoration drama. Sakamoto's colorful career, in fact, has drawn to it the talents of so many Japanese authors and play wrights that romance has to some degree come to overshadow fact. The foreign scholar, however, is less affected by this; pub lished sources, which retain enough flavor of personality to ex plain the man's attraction for biographers and authors, provide abundant opportunity to sift fiction from fact. I first became interested in the shishi, these "men of high pur- x