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Samurai;
Key player in overthrow
of Tokugawa Shogunate
Lived:
1835-1867
Birthplace:
Kochi (Tosa domain) |
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Article: Romulus Hillsborough
Photo: courtesy of the Kochi
Prefectural Museum of History
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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. >>> CONTINUE ARTICLE
 1835 - Born in Kochi
1866 - Brokered military alliance between
Satsuma and Choshu
1866 - Founded Kaientai
1867 - Devised plan for peaceful abdication
by Shogun
1867 - Assassinated in Kyoto
RYOMA - Life of a Renaissance Samurai
: Biography at Amazon.com
Samurai Sketches : Portrayal of
samurai life at Amazon.com
Ridgeback Press : Site of historian
and author Romulus Hillsborough
Kochi City Online : The Meiji Restoration
Sakamoto Ryoma Memorial Museum
The Kyoto Museum organizes annual
Ryoma exhibitions
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