Sakamoto Ryoma is one of my favorite figures in Japanese history. He was a low-ranking samurai who played a huge role in transforming Japan from a feudal society into a unified nation bent on modernizing and catching up with the West. He appeared at a critical moment in history and, like the Beatles, had a more profound effect on events than anyone could have predicted, given his low stature in society and the limited amount of time he was politically active. active. It took the Beatles eight years to change the world, it took Sakamoto Ryoma only five years to change Japan.
He made a lasting contribution to the modernization of Japan through his so-called “Eight Point Program”, of which Marius B. Jansen, emeritus professor of Japanese history at Princeton, writes:
Almost the entire Restoration program is contained within this Sakamoto program. His language would be repeated in the Charter Oath of 1868. [Japan’s first constitution]and his promise would form the basis of the Itagaki and Goto denunciations that launched the movement for representative institutions in 1874.
Sakamoto Ryoma’s eight point program was as follows:
- The political power of the entire country must be restored to the Imperial Court, and all decrees must come from the Court.
- Two legislative bodies, an Upper House and a Lower House, must be established, and all government measures must be decided on the basis of general opinion.
- Men of ability among the lords, nobles, and the common people must be employed as councillors, and the traditional offices of the past that have lost their purpose must be abolished.
- Foreign affairs must be conducted in accordance with appropriate rules drawn up on the basis of general opinion.
- Legislation and regulations of earlier times must be set aside and a new and suitable code selected.
- The army must be enlarged.
- An Imperial Guard must be established to defend the capital.
- The value of goods and silver must align with that of foreign countries.
As you can see, Sakamoto’s program was made up of several elements. Taken as a whole, it could be described as a plan for a constitutional monarchy (although point 1 is problematic as it could be interpreted as giving absolute power to the emperor). The ambiguity as to the role of the emperor was in fact a feature of the Meiji Constitution ; a fact that played a significant role in prewar Japan’s descent into military dictatorship), which was neither particularly progressive nor conservative for the time. On the other hand, points 3 and 5 are quite radical, while points 4, 6, 7 and 8 deal with the practical considerations necessary for Japan’s self-defense and for it to emerge as a modern nation on the world stage.
Given Sakamoto Ryoma’s experience, the Eight Point Program was a remarkable achievement; both for the fact that he was able to conceive of such a progressive plan and for the fact that he was able to get people in positions of power and influence to listen to him.
Sakamoto Ryoma was born in 1835 in Tosa, a powerful feudal domain on the southern island of Shikoku, the youngest son of a goshi samurai. Goshi was the lowest rank of samurai: they were disparagingly called “country samurai”, but rank and wealth did not necessarily go hand in hand in Edo-era Japan. The Sakamotos were descendants of a wealthy merchant who had found success with a pawnshop and sake brewery in the mid-16th century. A century later, in 1771 to be exact, the Sakamotos entered the ranks of the samurai when one of their ancestors was granted the status of goshi, just 64 years before Ryoma’s birth.
Sakamoto Ryoma’s family were not of high status, but they were well off enough to enroll Ryoma in a private school in the castle town of Kochi when he was twelve years old. This was a short-lived episode in his life as he showed little academic bent. When he was fourteen years old, he took up fencing, or kenjutsu, at which he excelled. He became one of the best swordsmen in his dojo and an accredited practitioner of the discipline in 1853, when he was nineteen years old. That same year, he moved to Edo and joined Kyobashi Fencing Academy, Chiba Sadakichi’s respected dojo, to hone his fencing skills. This was a fateful moment, for it was in 1853 that Commodore Matthew Perry arrived at the port of Uraga, near Edo, with his “black ships”, determined to open up the hermit kingdom that was Japan at the time. The sight of the four American warships, two of them steam-powered, made a great impression on the young Sakamoto, as it did on all of his countrymen.
The sphere of kenjutsu in which Sakamoto existed was one of hot temper and extreme politics. The swordsmanship academies of Edo, which trained students who were mostly goshi samurai like Ryoma, were hotbeds of radicalized young samurai eager to expel foreign demons. As the months and years passed, and the militarily inferior Tokugawa government was forced to make ever greater concessions to foreign “barbarians”, even allowing them to build settlements on Japan’s sacred land, the radicals became increasingly increasingly nationalistic and xenophobic. Under the motto “sonno-joi” (worship the Emperor, expel the barbarians) they called for the expulsion of all foreigners from Japanese soil, the restoration of the Emperor as the sole power of Japan, and the assassination of those Japanese officials. whom they considered collaborators and traitors.
Sakamoto Ryoma held these same views, as did the vast majority of young samurai of the time; he accused the Tokugawa shogunate of cowardice, selfishness, and duplicity, and of being “hand in hand with barbarians.”
However, her life changed when she met one of the most interesting and influential men of his day. His fateful encounter with Katsu Kaishu occurred under somewhat unusual circumstances when Sakamoto had gone to Katsu’s house to assassinate him. Katsu Kaishu was a scholar of “Dutch learning” or the study of Western knowledge. He had even established his own academy of western learning. Furthermore, Katsu had been a member of the first Japanese embassy to the United States in 1860. All of this, plus the fact that he advocated an open Japan policy, meant that in Sakamoto Ryoma’s eyes, Katsu was a foreign appeaser and enemy of the emperors. In December 1862, Sakamoto Ryoma and a feat went to Katsu’s house with the goal of killing him. But, according to the account of Matsudaira Shungaku (the contact who helped them break into Katsu’s residence), when they entered his house, Katsu Kaishu asked, “Did you come to kill me? If you did, you should wait until we’re done.” “. I’ve had a chance to talk.” Again, according to Matsudaira, “after listening to Katsu’s explanations, they were deeply impressed and full of admiration.”
It was a case of mutual admiration. Katsu took Sakamoto under her wing and Ryoma became a willing disciple. This is how he described his good fortune in a letter to his sister:
I must say that it is beyond me how things work in a man’s life. Some guys are so unlucky that they hit their private parts getting out of a bathtub and die as a result. When you compare my luck to that, it’s really remarkable. Here I was on the verge of death, and I did not die. I really thought I was going to do it and instead I’m going to live. Now I have become the disciple of the greatest man in Japan, Katsu Kaishu, and every day I can spend it on things that I have dreamed of. Even if he lived to be forty, he wouldn’t think of leaving this to go home. I have also told my older brother about this; he is in a good mood and approving of him. I am giving everything I have for the province and the country.
Katsu Kaishu was not the only influential contact that Sakamoto was able to develop. By all accounts, he had confidence, a quick intelligence complemented by a practical bent, unusual powers of persuasion, and most importantly, a warm and engaging personality; he also possessed the traditional samurai virtues of calm courage and an offhand indifference when it came to money. Thanks to all these qualities, he was blessed with many friends, admirers and contacts.
Sakamoto Ryoma is most famous for, in 1866, successfully brokering a military alliance between Satsuma and Choshu, two militarily powerful domains that had traditionally been bitter rivals. This was no easy feat as there was no love lost and much mutual suspicion between the two domains. The alliance sealed the fate of the Tokugawa shogunate, which was defeated in the subsequent Boshin War. The Boshin War was particularly bloody with high casualties, a fact sometimes glossed over to romanticize Sakamoto Ryoma’s role in the Meiji Restoration as engineering a “bloodless revolution”.
Sakamoto Ryoma strove to make Japan’s transition from a feudal nation to a modern unified nation a peaceful one, but given the volatile times he lived in, it’s no surprise that he failed in that effort. Also, given the volatile times he lived in, it’s no surprise that he had enemies as well as friends. He did not live to see Japan become the strong and unified country he had envisioned. Sakamoto Ryoma was assassinated on December 10, 1867, a month before the coup that overthrew the shogun, restored the emperor to power, and set Japan on the path to eventually becoming a modern nation-state, based largely on in your own Eight Point Program.
