Samurai Sketches
Ryoma: Life of a Renaissance Samurai
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Sakamoto Ryoma
The Indispensable "Nobody"
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by Romulus Hillsborough
In June 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States Navy led a
squadron of four heavily armed warships into Sagami Bay, to the Port of Uraga,
just south of the shogun's capital at Edo. What the Americans found was a
technologically backward, though intricately complicated, island nation, under
the rule of the House of Tokugawa, that had been isolated from the rest of the
world for two and a half centuries .
Whether or not the Americans realized the far-reaching effects of their gunboat
diplomacy, they now set into motion a coup de theatre which fifteen years hence
would transform the conglomerate of some 260 feudal domains into a single,
unified country. When the fifteenth and last shogun, Yoshinobu Tokugawa,
abdicated his rule and restored the emperor to his ancient seat of power in
November 1867, Japan was well on its way to becoming an industrialized nation,
rapidly modernizing and Westernizing in a unique Japanese sense.
Quite a transformation in just fifteen years, and much of the credit goes to a
lower ranking samurai from the Tosa domain named Sakamoto Ryoma. When Ryoma
fled his native Tosa in spring 1862, he was a "nobody." Although he was a
renowned swordsman who had served as head of an elite fencing academy in Edo,
and was also a leader of the young samurai in Tosa who advocated the radical
slogans Expelling the Barbarians, Imperial Reverence and Toppling the
Shogunate, in the eyes of the power that were he was a "nobody." He had never
held an official post, and he never would. When in the following October the
"nobody" met Katsu Kaishu, the enlightened commissioners of the shogun's navy,
it might have been with intent to assassinate him. But, of course, Ryoma did
not kill Kaishu. Instead, this champion of samurai who would overthrow the
shogunate and expel the barbarians became the devoted follower of the elite
shogunal official. Kaishu opened Ryoma's eyes to the futility of trying to
defend against a foreign onslaught without first developing a powerful navy;
and to this end Japan desperately needed Western technology and expertise.
Ryoma now worked with Kaishu, whom he called "the greatest man in Japan," to
establish a naval academy in Kobe, where he and his comrades studied the naval
arts and sciences under their revered mentor. But certain of his hotheaded
comrades called Ryoma a turncoat for siding with the enemy, which, of course,
was not true. As if to belie the false accusation, in the following June Ryoma
vowed, in a letter to his sister, to "clean up Japan once and for all." What he
was talking about was overthrowing the military government, which Kaishu
loyally served. Earlier in the same month, ships of the United States and
France had shelled the radical Choshu domain in retaliation for Choshu's having
recently fired upon foreign ships passing through Shimonoseki Strait. News of
the attack deeply troubled Ryoma, who was concerned about possible designs
among the Western powers, particularly France and England, to colonize Japan as
the latter had China. When Ryoma learned that the foreign ships that had
bombarded Choshu were subsequently repaired at a Tokugawa shipyard in Edo, he
was fighting mad. "It is really too bad that Choshu started a war last month by
shelling foreign ships," he wrote his sister. "This does not benefit Japan at
all. But what really disgusts me is that the ships they shot up in Choshu are
being repaired at Edo, and when they're fixed will head right back to Choshu to
fight again. This is all because corrupt officials in Edo are in league with
the barbarians." But, now, through the good offices of Katsu Kaishu, Ryoma too
was in league with some very powerful men. "Although those corrupt shogunal
officials have a great deal of power now, I'm going to get the help of two or
three daimyo and enlist likeminded men so we can start thinking more about the
good of Japan, and not only the Imperial Court. Then, I'll get together with my
friends in Edo (you know, Tokugawa retainers, daimyo and so on) to go after
those wicked officials and cut them down."
Ryoma was not opposed to boasting, and he had a big ego, declaring to his
sister: "It's a shame that there aren't more men like me around the country."
For all his boasting, however, Ryoma was also a realist. "I don't expect that
I'll be around too long. But I'm not about to die like any average person
either. I'm only prepared to die when big changes finally come, when even if I
continue to live I will no longer be of any use to the country. But since I'm
fairly shifty, I'm not likely to die so easily. But seriously, although I was
born a mere potato digger in Tosa, a nobody, I'm destined to bring about great
changes in the nation. But I'm definitely not going to get puffed up about it.
Quite the contrary! I'm going to keep my nose to the ground, like a clam in the
mud. So don't worry about me!"
It seems that Ryoma was also an incredible visionary who foresaw his own
destination. Four years later the "nobody" from Tosa forced the peaceful
abdication of Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu, and the restoration of the emperor to
power - the event that historians call the Meiji Restoration.
But how could Ryoma - who had plunged from the status of "nobody," to that of
outlaw, and one of the most wanted men on a long list of Tokugawa enemies - be
of sufficient consequence to force the abdication of the generalissimo of the
267-year-old samurai government? And what were his reasons for doing so, even
at the risk of his own life? To answer the second question first, and to put it
quite simply, Ryoma was a lover of freedom - the freedom to act, the freedom to
think, and the freedom to be. These were the ideals that drove Ryoma on his
dangerous quest for freedom - which, of course, was nothing less than the
salvation of Japan. But the greatest obstacle to this freedom, and to the
salvation of Japan from foreign subjugation, was the antiquated Tokugawa
system, with its hundreds of feudal domains and suppressive class structure,
which men like Katsu Kaishu and Sakamoto Ryoma meant to replace with a
representative form of government styled after the great Western powers, and
based on a free-class society and open commerce with the rest of the world.
While Ryoma was painfully aware of the necessity to eliminate the shogunate,
the means for revolution eluded him. Having abandoned Tosa, he was a ronin, an
outlaw samurai - a status which at once aided and confounded him. Unlike his
comrades-in-arms from Choshu, Satsuma and other samurai clans, he was not bound
to the service of feudal lord and clan. On the other hand he did not enjoy the
financial support and protection of a powerful feudal domain. After much trial
and tribulation, and as his first giant step toward realizing his great
objective, Ryoma devised a preposterous plan of convincing Satsuma and Choshu
to join forces with one another as the only means to topple the shogunate. But
Satsuma and Choshu were bitter enemies whose hate for one another surpassed
even that hate which they had historically harbored toward the Tokugawa. What's
more, the braggart Ryoma had a reputation for exaggerating. When he told his
friends of his plan, some initially dismissed it as so much "hot air," while
others simply thought he was crazy. But in addition to many other talents,
Ryoma, a truly Renaissance man, was endowed with an uncanny power of
persuasion. After a year of planning and negotiation, in January 1866, Ryoma,
now an indispensable "nobody," successfully brokered a military alliance
between Satsuma and Choshu, which more than anything else hastened the collapse
of the Tokugawa Shogunate.
Although the shogunate had not yet learned of the secret alliance, Tokugawa
police agents strongly suspected that Ryoma was up to no good. On the night
after the alliance was sealed in Kyoto, Ryoma was ambushed by a Tokugawa police
squad, as he and a samurai of Choshu, who had been assigned as Ryoma's
bodyguard, celebrated their great success in a second-story room at Ryoma's
favorite inn, the Teradaya, on the outskirts of the Imperial capital. A young
maidservant at the inn, named Oryo, had been soaking in a hot bath when she
heard the assailants break into the house. Oryo immediately ran from the
bathroom stark naked up the dark staircase to warn the two men upstairs. The
scene is a very famous one, as is the ensuing battle, during which Ryoma
wielded a Smith & Wesson revolver, his bodyguard a lethal spear, to fend
off their assailants and escape through the backdoor. Equally famous is the
wedding between Ryoma and Oryo, which took place soon after, and their
subsequent trip to the hot-spring baths in the Kirishima mountains of Satsuma,
which was supposedly the first honeymoon in Japan.
In spring 1867, Ryoma established his Kaientai, Japan's first modern
corporation and the precursor to the Mitsubishi. Based in the international
port-city of Nagasaki, the Kaientai was a private navy and shipping firm
through which Ryoma and his men ran guns for the Choshu and Satsuma
revolutionaries.
In the previous June, Ryoma had commanded a warship in a sea-battle off
Shimonoseki, in which he aided Choshu's Extraordinary Corps, Japan's first
modern militia, comprising both samurai and peasants, in a rout of Tokugawa
naval forces. While Ryoma's anti-Tokugawa comrades from Satsuma and Choshu
prepared to crush the shogunate by military might, the "nobody" from Tosa
devised a plan to avoid bloody civil war and foreign intervention. Ryoma's
"Great Plan at Sea," an eight-point plan which he wrote aboard ship, called for
the shogun to return the reins of government to the Imperial Court; for the
establishment of Upper and Lower Houses of government; for all government
measures to be based on public opinion, and decided by councilors comprised of
the most able feudal lords, court nobles and the Japanese people at large.
Rather than merely saying that Ryoma was once again "blowing hot air," or that
he was "crazy," there were now some among his comrades who felt betrayed. These
men advocated complete annihilation of the shogunate to assure it would never
rise again, and felt that Ryoma was a traitor. But Ryoma convinced one of his
more level-headed friends, Goto Shojiro, who was a close aide to Yamanouchi
Yodo, the influential Lord of Tosa, to urge Yodo to endorse the plan.
Meanwhile, Ryoma continued to run guns for the revolutionaries, because he knew
that the only way to convince the shogun to abdicate would be to demonstrate
that his only alternative was military annihilation, which, of course, was no
alternative at all. Lord Yodo took Goto's advice and sent Ryoma's plan to the
shogun, as if it were his own brainchild. Eleven days later, on October 14,
1867, in the Grand Hall of Nijo Castle in Kyoto, as Satsuma and Choshu hastened
their final war plans, the shogun announced his abdication before his
adversaries had the chance to strike.
With the overthrow of the corrupt and decrepit Tokugawa regime, the "nobody"
from Tosa had made good on his vow to "clean up Japan" - although,
unfortunately for his country, he would pay for it with his life. Sakamoto
Ryoma was assassinated one month later, on November 15, his thirty-second
birthday, in the second-story room in the house of a wealthy soy dealer in
Kyoto which he used as a hideout.
Equally unfortunate for Ryoma's country was that cleaning up Japan "once and
for all" proved to be too long a period of time, even for a genius like Ryoma.
This is why, amidst the rampant corruption in Japanese business circles today,
many people in Japan have expressed their wish that a leader of Ryoma's caliber
would somehow miraculously emerge. A couple years ago executives of 200
Japanese corporations were asked by Asahi Shimbun, an national daily newspaper,
the question: "Who from the past millennium of world history would be most
useful in overcoming Japan's current financial crisis?" Sakamoto Ryoma received
more mention than any other historical figure, topping such giants as Thomas
Edison, Leonardo da Vinci, Saigo Takamori, Oda Nobunaga and the founders of NEC
and Honda. Evidently many Japanese people today think their country needs a
good scrubbing once again.
Copyright(c)2002 Romulus Hillsborough
(Romulus Hillsborough is the author of RYOMA - Life of a Renaissance Samurai
(Ridgeback Press, 1999) and Samurai Sketches: From the Bloody Final Years of
the Shogun (Ridgeback Press, 2001) RYOMA is the only biographical novel of
Sakamoto Ryoma in the English language. Samurai Sketches is a collection of
historical sketches, never before presented in English, depicting men and
events during the revolutionary years of mid-19th century Japan. Reviews and
more information about these books are available at
www.ridgebackpress.com.)
Sakamoto Ryoma written by Romulus Hillsborough
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Copyright © 2002 Romulus Hillsborough.
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