A reproduction of the same statue stands on Okinoerabujima, where Saig had been exiled. This provoked open conflict, although with the elimination of samurai rice stipends in 1877, tensions were already extremely high. The Last Samurai chronicles the fortuitous rise and tragic fall of Saig. Corrections? Although the samurai were heavily outnumbered, they made a heroic stand and counterattack against the Japanese Army and showed their legendary skills off to the world in their final fight. Satsuma Rebellion The first test of the young Meiji government came with the revolt of the powerful Satsuma clan based in the southern region of the island of Kyushu. Soon, more than 1,000 Satsuma samurai appeared and drove off the intruding sailors. After a failed assault, Saig settled for a siege. Imperial forces landed with few losses, then pushed north seizing the city of Miyanohara on March 19. The decision in 1938 Japan was divided into six military districts: Tokyo, Sendai, Nagoya, Osaka, Hiroshima and Kumamoto, with two or three regiments of infantry, plus artillery and other auxiliary troops, assigned to each district. Small-scale rebellions broke out around Japan, and the shogun's troops proved shockingly unable to put down the uprisings. Request Permissions. In order to cut Saig off from his base, an imperial force with three warships, 500 policemen, and several companies of infantry landed in Kagoshima on March 8, seized arsenals, and took Satsuma's governor into custody. On January 30, 1877, the central government launched a raid on the arms and ammunition storage areas in Kagoshima, without any prior warning to the Satsuma authorities. Initially he was furious about the junior samurais' actions. "Southwestern War") was a revolt of disaffected samurai against the new imperial government, nine years into the Meiji Era. Let us know if you have suggestions to improve this article (requires login). [2] He had six siblings and his younger brother was Marshal-Admiral Marquis Saig Jd. During the Boshin War, Saig led the imperial forces at the Battle of TobaFushimi, and after led the imperial army toward Edo, where he accepted the surrender of Edo Castle from Katsu Kaish. The year 2018 has seen many events in Japan marking 150 years since the Meiji Restoration. Fearing a rebellion, the Meiji government sent a warship to Kagoshima to remove the weapons stockpiled at the Kagoshima arsenal on January 30, 1877. Saigo privately cheered on the rebels in other provinces, but stayed at his country house rather than returning to Kagoshima for fear that his presence might spark yet another rebellion. The coming into force in January, 1877, of the edict, issued in the previous year, prohibiting the wearing of swords, was followed by Shimadzu's resignation of the high office he held in the Ministry. In the final battle, the Battle of Shiroyama, 30,000 imperial troops bore down upon Saigo and his few hundreds of surviving rebel samurai. Saig expected both that a war would ultimately be successful for Japan and also that the initial stages of it would offer a means by which the samurai whose cause he championed could find meaningful and beneficial death. In disgust at this latest move of a Government with which he had never from the first been in sympathy, he left Tokio. How the Samurai Ended During the Satsuma Rebellion, Overview of the Tokugawa Shogunate of Japan, A Long History of Japanese Women Warriors, The Four-Tiered Class System of Feudal Japan, J.D., University of Washington School of Law, B.A., History, Western Washington University. These attacks on the ramparts continued for two days, until Saigo decided to settle in for a siege. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/figures-and-events-in-asian-history-s2-3896549. They resisted the Imperial forces until they were destroyed to the last man. Then I introduced the leader of the rebellion. Saigo Takamori was born on January 23, 1828, in Kagoshima, Satsuma's capital, the oldest of seven children. There, the situation was complicated by the existence of no less than three parties two conservative groups led, respectively, by the old noble Shimadzu, the father of the young ex-daimio, and by the elder Saigo, the latter being at once the most influential and most numerous; and a thirdthe party of reformwhich looked for guidance, among other prominent men, to Okubo, Kuroda, Matsugata, Kawamura and the younger Saigo. But this war served as a touchstone to test the ability of the new regime and was an indispensable medium for perfecting the modern institutions and unified organization of the state. The shogunate's troops were well-armed, but their leaders had no consistent strategy, and they failed to cover their own flanks. In April of 1871, Saigo was persuaded to return to Tokyo to organize the new national army. Bonded by their distaste for the shogunate, Choshu and Satsuma gradually formed an alliance. Decent Essays. The leaders of the restoration were mostly young samurai from feudal domains ( han s) historically hostile to Tokugawa authority, notably Chsh, in far western Honshu, and Satsuma, in southern Kyushu. The artillery battalion was divided into 2 batteries with 130 men per battery. The myth stems from the fact that the legions used a phalanx system with spears as primary system before the manipel system was introduced and the Gladius became thr primary weapon for most of the empire. Several samurai, upon seeing him in this state, would have severed his head, assisting him in the warrior's suicide that they knew he would have wished. 4, Sophia University, JSTOR, 1973. His childhood name was Kokichi and he received the given name Takamori in adulthood. Just about 400 or 500 of the Satsuma samurai escaped the mountain slope on August 19, including Saigo Takamori. Down to about 3,000 men, the Satsuma forces made a stand on Mount Enodake. However, other evidence contradicts this, stating that Saig in fact died of the bullet wound and then had his head removed by Beppu in order to preserve his dignity. Although Nakahara later repudiated the confession, it was widely believed in Satsuma and was used as justification by the disaffected samurai that a rebellion was necessary in order to "protect Saig". In the hostilities which followed he took no part, being content to show his disapproval of the new regime by withdrawing into a retirement from which he never again emerged. As was the tradition for samurai in the event of their lord's death, Saigo contemplated committing to accompany Shimazu into death, but the monk Gessho convinced him to live and continue his political work to honor Nariakira's memory instead. He argued that Japan should use diplomacy, rather than resorting to force, and offered to head a delegation himself. Attempts at Constitutional Government > Satsuma Rebellion. In all, about 12,000 Satsuma men marched north toward Tokyo, starting the Southwest War, or Satsuma Rebellion . Ravina prefers the English name "War of the Southwest."[12]. He also cancelled scholarships for Japanese students abroad and fired foreign experts.[8]. The rebellion lasted from January 29, 1877, until September of that year, when it was decisively crushed and its leader, Saig Takamori, was shot and mortally wounded. The influential Satsuma samurai, Saigo Takamori, was away at the time and had no knowledge of these events, but hurried home when he heard the news. The Satsuma Rebellion. Satsuma Rebellion. Datasets available include LCSH, BIBFRAME, LC Name Authorities, LC Classification, MARC codes, PREMIS vocabularies, ISO language codes, and more. traffic source, etc. The shogun's men were still hunting him, so Saigo went into a three-year internal exile on the small island of Amami Oshima. 1973 Sophia University Add to Wish List Link to this Book Add to Bookbag Sell this Book Buy it at Amazon Compare Prices. Artillery consisted of over 100 pieces, including 5.28 pound mountain guns, Krupp field guns of various calibers, and mortars. Soon 132 branches were established all over the prefecture. The Satsuma Rebellion (February 1877 - September 1877) and Its Woodblock Prints In riding through the streets one notices the crowds in front of the picture shops, which are bright in color from the war prints. Format: Paperback. It is not clear what was done with Saig's head immediately after his death. ISBN-13: . Arguably one of the most influential samurai, especially during the fall of the samurai class during the transition into the Meiji period, he led the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877, which marked the last of a series of uprisings against the new Meiji government. However, the Imperial Army was likewise depleted, and fighting was suspended for several weeks to permit reinforcement. A primary source of its causes and events. Meanwhile, the Joseon Dynasty in Korea refused to recognize the Mutsuhito as an emperor, because it traditionally recognized only the Chinese emperor as suchall other rulers were mere kings. At the start of the Satsuma Rebellion, the Imperial Japanese Army (including the Imperial Guard) numbered approximately 34,000 men. Secretary of the British Legation in Tokyo during the rebellion, Mounsey relied on the 'most authentic sources, oral and documentary'. Not being allowed to travel by sea, he went back to Satsuma by land, following the historic route he and other nobles had so often taken before. In peacetime, each company had approximately 160 privates and 32 officers and non-commissioned officers. When an Imperial Navy landing party reached the arsenal at Somuta under cover of night, locals raised the alarm. Shortly thereafter, a private military academy known as the Shi-gakk was established in Kagoshima for the faithful samurai who had also resigned their posts to follow him from Tokyo. The Satsuma Rebellion - Free ebook download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read book online for free. The government, however, refused to negotiate. As with its predecessors, the origins of 1877 lie in the 1873 debate over a proposed invasion of Korea. Following the repression of the Satsuma Rebellion, a samurai uprising in 1877, Japan again forged ahead toward political unity, but there was an increasing trend of antigovernment protest from below, which was epitomized by the Movement for Peoples Rights. Conscription System in Japan Author : Ogawa, Gataro Year- 1921 Type- book "The Satsuma Rebellion led Japan to turn over a new leaf. Learn how and when to remove this template message, "Meiji Restoration leader's lessons of sincerity", Names, Romanizations, and Spelling (page 1 of 2), On Saig and the establishment of a railway, "The Apocryphal Suicide of Saig Takamori: Samurai, "Seppuku", and the Politics of Legend", Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Saig_Takamori&oldid=1130843774, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles lacking in-text citations from January 2018, Articles containing Japanese-language text, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Saig Kichijir (younger brother): Killed in action in the, Saig Kohei (younger brother): Killed in action in the, This page was last edited on 1 January 2023, at 07:05. The Tokugawa regime was falling apart, but it had not yet occurred to Saigo that a future Japanese government might not include a shogunafter all, the shoguns had ruled Japanfor 800 years. They saw Japan as the abode of godssince the Emperor descended from the Sun Goddessand believed that the heavens would protect them from the western military and economic might. In the Emperor's capital, politics had changed significantly during Saigo's exile. SAIGO's army campaigned as far as Kumamoto and Miyazaki (both in Kyushu), but then returned to Kagoshima in September, where it holed up in Shiroyama. The rebellion lasted from January 29, 1877, until September of that year, when it was decisively crushed, and its leader, Saig Takamori, was shot and mortally wounded. He hoped to raise the samurai of other domains along the way. After the Restoration the condition of things became less unsettled in Mito, and to some extent also in Choshiu. However, the exact manner of his death is unknown. The rebellion lasted from January 29, 1877, until September . Please support our book restoration project by becoming a Forgotten Books member. The Satsuma Rebellion: An Episode of Modern Japanese History; with Maps - Primary Source Edition. Satsuma rebeliion.svg 703 965; 1.09 MB. Rebellions by the samurai, which had broken out sporadically since 1868 (Meiji 1), including the 1869-70 conflict between irregular military units and upper rank samurai commanders in the Choshu domain, gained steam with the collapse of the "conquer Korea debate". In addition to the army, the central government also used marines and Tokyo policemen in its struggle against Satsuma. instance of. It began to promote samurai officials based on talent, rather than rank, and also encouraged the development of modern industry. The accounts of his subordinates claim that he stood up and committed seppuku after his injury or that he requested that his friend Beppu Shinsuke assist his suicide. Ravina, Mark J. The modernization of the country meant the abolition of the privileged social status of the samurai class, and had undermined their financial position. Who are Satnamis? Saigo's retirement project was the Shigakko, new private schools for young Satsuma samurai where the students studied infantry, artillery, and the Confucian classics. The survivors were out of ammunition, so had to rely on their swords. Saig met the noted British diplomat Ernest Satow in the 1860s, as recorded in the latter's A Diplomat in Japan, and Satow was present at the unveiling as recorded in his diary. [11], Modern weapons that were used by the Imperial Army include the Smith and Wesson Model 3, Colt 1851 Navy Revolver, Winchester Model 1873, Enfield Pattern 1853, Mauser Model 1871, as well as the Gatling and Armstrong guns. Format: Paperback. [9], A Japanese hand fan commemorating the event, which survives in the collection of the Staten Island Historical Society in New York, features a depiction of Saig Takamori in a scene labeled (in English) "The Battle Near the Citadel of Kumamoto".[10]. This was witnessed by the American sea captain John Capen Hubbard. All three accounts report that the body was decapitated. @media only screen and (min-device-width : 320px) and (max-device-width : 480px) { SAIGO, who was then living in seclusion, had no choice but to rise to action after the private-school faction beseeched him to do so. Led by Daniel Shays, the rebel "Shaysites" of . All, perhaps, over-estimated their share in the accomplishment of the Restoration. The Imperial Japanese Armed Forces (IJAF) were the combined military forces of the Japanese Empire.Formed during the Meiji Restoration in 1868, they were disbanded in 1947, shortly after Japan's defeat to the Allies of World War II; the renewed Constitution of Japan, drafted during the Meiji Restoration in 1868, they were disbanded in 1947, shortly However, the shogun began to purge pro-imperial politicians, forcing Gessho to seek Saigo's help in escaping to Kagoshima, where the new Satsuma daimyo, unfortunately, refused to protect the pair from shogun officials. In December 1876, the Meiji government sent a police officer named Nakahara Hisao and 57 other men to investigate reports of subversive activities and unrest. Unable to overcome the affection that the people had for this paragon of traditional samurai virtues, the Meiji-era government pardoned him posthumously on February 22, 1889. In the wee hours of the morning on September 24, the emperor's troops launched a three-hour-long artillery barrage, followed by a massed infantry assault that began at 6 am. For terms and use, please refer to our Terms and Conditions Friction among the Cabinet members over the question of Korean conquest, added to the local disturbances, made the already confused state of things worse confounded, and the result was the famous Satsuma Rebellion of 1877. The line infantry was divided into 14 regiments of three battalions each. 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