As tensions increased, in January 1877, the central government sent a ship to seize munitions stores from Kagoshima. 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. Here he had established an institution which, in order to disguise its object, was called a "private school." Although greatly dismayed by the revolt, Saig was reluctantly persuaded to lead the rebels against the central government. Monumenta Nipponica 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. The Satsuma Rebellion. 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. [3], Saig Takamori, one of the senior Satsuma leaders in the Meiji government who had initially supported the reforms, was especially concerned about growing political corruption - popular prints depicted the rebel army with banners bearing the words shinsei-ktoku (, new government, high morality). ISBN-10: 0341798762. He was born on May 26 th in the fourth year of Keian (, 1651). Just four days after his return, he had an audience with the daimyo, Hisamitsu, who shocked him by appointing him commander of the Satsuma army in Kyoto. During war a company's strength was to be increased to 240 privates. Great Essays. Satsuma had no reserve of extra weapons and insufficient ammunition for an extended war. During the siege, many Kumamoto ex-samurai flocked to Saig's banner, swelling his forces to around 20,000 men. By 6 a.m., only 40 rebels were still alive. Format: Paperback. Ravina, Mark. Saigo soon noted that he had "fallen into their trap and taken the bait" of settling into a siege. It is said that he was shot in the femur, then he thrust a sword into his stomach region, then had his head decapitated deliberately by a fellow citizen. instance of. First I developed my thesis statement. Soon, Saigo was Daimyo Shimazu Nariakira's closest adviser, consulting other national figures on affairs including the shogunal succession. Ravina prefers the English name "War of the Southwest."[12]. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/the-satsuma-rebellion-195570. In July, the Emperor's army encircled Saigo's men, but the Satsuma army fought its way free with heavy casualties. The surviving rebels made a stand on the slopes of Mount Enodake, and were soon surrounded. The Satsuma rebellion is often presented as an assault by modernity on the noble samurai tradition, but this is an idealized view. Although much of his history has been lost, recent scholars have discovered clues to the true nature of this illustrious warrior and diplomat. This opposition reached the boiling point in 1876 when the central government banned samurai from carrying swords and stopped paying them stipends. . All three accounts report that the body was decapitated. Despite Yamagata's efforts over the next several days, Saig and his remaining 500 men reached Kagoshima on September 1 and seized Shiroyama, overlooking the city. Over the next several nights, they raided additional arsenals around Kagoshima, stealing weapons and ammunition, and to make matters worse, they discovered that the national police had sent a number of Satsuma natives to the Shigakko as central government spies. It was believed by some that he had fled to Russia, or ascended to Mars. [citation needed]. Upload media. Legend says that one of his followers, Beppu Shinsuke, acted as kaishakunin and aided Saig in committing seppuku before he could be captured. Each man was armed with a small firearmeither a rifle, a carbine, or a pistolas well as 100 rounds of ammunition and, of course, his katana. The government, however, refused to negotiate. It was the final battle of the Satsuma Rebellion, . Takamori Saigo, defeated in his insistent advocacy of the invasion of Korea, resigned his councillorship in the Cabinet and returned to his native place. On his return to Kobe on February 12, Hayashi met with General Yamagata Aritomo and It Hirobumi, and it was decided that the Imperial Japanese Army would need to be sent to Kagoshima to prevent the revolt from spreading to other areas of the country sympathetic to Saig. On the same day, Saig met with his lieutenants Kirino Toshiaki and Shinohara Kunimoto and announced his intention of marching to Tokyo to ask questions of the government. Dr. Kallie Szczepanski is a history teacher specializing in Asian history and culture. Paperback, 1 edition, Wiley, February 7, 2005. Publication Date: 2006. The new conscript levies initially struggled to defeat Saig, and the government found it necessary to enlist former. Dr. Kallie Szczepanski is a history teacher specializing in Asian history and culture. On July 24, the Imperial Army forced Saig out of Miyakonoj, followed by Nobeoka. On its march to Kumamoto castle, the army was divided into three divisions; a vanguard of 4,000 men, the main division of 4,000 men, and a rearguard of 2,000 men. He also married a local woman namedAigana and fathered a son. The few surviving samurai launched a suicide charge into the teeth of the imperial army's Gatling guns, and were shot down. In February 1877, the Meiji government dispatched Hayashi Tomoyuki, an official with the Home Ministry with Admiral Kawamura Sumiyoshi in the warship Takao to ascertain the situation. The police, in units ranging from 300 to 600 men, were mostly ex-samurai (ironically, many of whom were from Satsuma) and were armed only with wooden batons and swords (Japanese police did not carry firearms until the rice riots of 1918). Just about 400 or 500 of the Satsuma samurai escaped the mountain slope on August 19, including Saigo Takamori. OutOfFighters 3 yr. ago. In the autumn of 1875 it was already in a flourishing condition, and in the course of the following year there were in Kagoshima alone some seven thousand pupils, or associates. 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. Satsuma Rebellion. The work is generally accurate and has much of . On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. The cavalry regiment consisted of 150 men. A primary source of its causes and events. The Guard infantry was divided into 2 regiments of 2 battalions each. Saig Takamori (Takanaga) ( (), January 23, 1828 September 24, 1877) was a Japanese samurai and nobleman. The Satsuma Rebellion: An Episode of Modern Japanese History (1879) Author: Augustus Henry Mounsey. Updates? This upbringing instilled a sense of dignity, frugality, and honor in young Saigo. 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. Living during the late Edo and early Meiji periods, he later led the Satsuma Rebellion against the Meiji government. 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. Some legends say Saig's manservant hid the head, and it was later found by a government soldier. The rebels' momentum soon stalled when they settled into a months-long siege of Kumamoto Castle, just 109 miles north of Kagoshima. They also believed that only the samurai had the courage and training to defend Japan from its enemies, internal and external. Small-scale rebellions broke out around Japan, and the shogun's troops proved shockingly unable to put down the uprisings. [citation needed], In English, the most common name for the war is the "Satsuma Rebellion". The Daimyo of Satsuma was one of the most powerful and aggressive of the . Saig and his remaining samurai were pushed back to Kagoshima where, in a final battle, the Battle of Shiroyama, Imperial Army troops under the command of General Yamagata Aritomo and marines under the command of Admiral Kawamura Sumiyoshi outnumbered Saig 60-to-1. 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. Early on February 22, the Satsuma attack began. https://www.thoughtco.com/the-satsuma-rebellion-195570 (accessed March 1, 2023). Themes In Keeper N Me. The Satsuma advance guard, 4,000 strong, set out on February 15, marching north. The very rapid and massive changes to Japanese culture, language, dress and society appeared to many samurai to be a betrayal of the ji ("expel the barbarian") portion of the sonn ji justification used to overthrow the former Tokugawa shogunate. Kumamoto, Fukuoka, Saga and other places in Kyushu, not to speak of Satsuma, his birthplace, responded to his call. Blog. The Satsuma samurai were initially organized into six battalions of 2,000 men each. Yates, Charles L. "Saigo Takamori in the Emergence of Meiji Japan." 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. 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". On the night of April 8, a force from Kumamoto castle made a sortie, forcing open a gap in the Satsuma lines and enabling desperately needed supplies to reach the garrison. Shiba was in the Imperial Army at the time. "How the Samurai Ended During the Satsuma Rebellion." The samurai then attacked imperial facilities around the province, seizing weapons and parading them through the streets of Kagoshima. The men were captured, and under torture, confessed that they were spies who had been sent to assassinate Saig. At one point, he offered to visit Korea in person and to provoke a casus belli by behaving in such an insulting manner that the Koreans would be forced to kill him. 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 following day, Hayashi declared to Oyama that he could not permit Kawamura to go ashore when the situation was so unsettled, and that the attack on Takao constituted an act of lse-majest. However, despite their successes, the Satsuma army failed to take the castle, and began to realize that the conscript army was not as ineffective as first assumed. A gripping graphic novel describing the uprising of 1887, when. Saig's death brought the Satsuma Rebellion to an end. The traditional explanation of the offensive rifle cartridges causing the initial outbreak of mutiny is only part of the story. His father, Saigo Kichibei, was a low-ranking samurai tax official who only managed to scrape by despite his samurai status. The Imperial Guard (mostly ex-samurai) was always maintained at wartime strength. Read 7 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. Three years later, he began work in the local bureaucracy as an agricultural adviser, where he continued to work through his brief, childless arranged marriage to 23-year-old Ijuin Suga in 1852. Many of the warrior Samurai during the Seinan war (Satsuma rebellion) used the tosei (modern / post 1540) style samurai armor which consisted of a ni-mai . Along with troops from Aizu, Saigo's massive army marched on Choshu, where he negotiated a peaceful settlement rather than launching an attack. The survivors were out of ammunition, so had to rely on their swords. These attacks on the ramparts continued for two days, until Saigo decided to settle in for a siege. What the disaffected clans and individuals wanted was a larger share of power. traffic source, etc. 150,000 YEN UNSIGNED. To understand the dynamism of the Meiji years, one must begin with the factors in the Tokugawa era (1600-1868) that made Japan a unique and sophisticated nation. . 0 Reviews. In the end, he was killed by the imperial army he organized. The Satsuma Rebellion (also known as "seinan sens" - the Southwestern War) was a turning point in Japanese history. . 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 disgust at this latest move of a Government with which he had never from the first been in sympathy, he left Tokio. (2021, September 7). Its name comes from the Satsuma Domain, which had been influential in the Restoration and became home to unemployed samurai after military reforms rendered their status obsolete. He led his samurai straight up the middle of Kyushu, planning to cross the straits and march on Tokyo.