![]() He considered the assassination plot a sign of the new government’s questionable character and potential threat against the emperor. Secondly, he discovered a Tokyo-supported plot to assassinate him. First, students in his Shi-gakkō samurai academy seized Kagoshima’s arsenals in February 1877, prompting Takamori to reluctantly support their actions. Saigō Takamori’s leadership in the rebellion was instigated by two events. Satsuma in particular was the only domain to resist being assimilated into the government’s newly centralized state, and Satsuma samurai were especially angry that they had been key supporters of the government that was now nullifying their way of life. Samurai grew increasingly bitter regarding the social reforms, westernization, economic uncertainty, and the mass conscription of peasants limiting the number of samurai employed by the army. A series of new laws in the early 1870s cut the samurai stipend and banned warriors from carrying katanas or dressing with their traditional topknot hairstyle. Ironically, the Meiji Restoration, orchestrated almost entirely by samurai, ended the privileges of the samurai warrior class through its complete reorganization of Japan’s feudal class system. The Meiji Restoration and Beginning of the Satsuma Rebellion Map of the Satsuma Rebellion, via Wikimedia Commons This influence lessened as he aged, but Takamori retained a passionate loyalty for his nation and the samurai lifestyle until his death. As a young man, he was influenced by Mito learning, which placed a heavy emphasis on the divinity of the emperor and hatred of Westernization. ![]() Born in 1827, he was intensely driven to fulfill the samurai warrior ideals of loyalty, honor, and duty. Saigō Takamori is widely considered the “last samurai” because of how completely he embodied the samurai warrior ethos. ![]() 1, 1934-35, via the National Diet Library Saigō Takamori: The Last Samurai Warrior Drawing of Saigō Takamori, printed in Kinsei Meishi Shashin vol. This ethos would continue to be the center of the samurai’s worldview up until their last and greatest rebellion against 19th-century modernization- the Satsuma Rebellion - and the death of Saigō Takamori, the last samurai. The samurai found this in their ethical code. For a warrior to survive an extended period of peace, they required a central focus outside of the battlefield. This relatively peaceful era revealed the paradox lying within Bushido the samurai warriors’ ethos became more important to their survival than the life of the warrior itself. Unsurprisingly, and unfortunately for the Satsuma Rebellion, the sword symbolized all of the samurai warrior ideals.Īfter the Closed Country Edict of 1635 isolated Japan and ended the age of samurai warrior mercenaries going abroad, conflict was restricted to small-scale domestic skirmishes. Personal honor was crucial to the point of seppuku bluntly, “the Way of the Samurai is found in death.” This encouragement towards death was embedded in the samurai warrior code of Bushido. From as early as 1180, the samurai ethos centered around the virtue of loyalty and courage. The samurai warrior class has long been the iconic symbol of feudal Japan. ![]() Samurai Warriors Southern Officers, Felice Beato, circa 1867, via The Guardian
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