Sakamoto Ryoma: The Indispensable "Nobody"
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In spring 1867, Ryoma established his Kaientai, Japan's first modern corporation and the precursor to Mitsubishi. Based in the international port-city of Nagasaki, the Kaientai was a private navy and shipping firm through which Ryoma and his men ran guns for the Choshu and Satsuma revolutionaries.
In the previous June, Ryoma had commanded a warship in a sea battle off Shimonoseki, in which he aided Choshu's Extraordinary Corps, Japan's first modern militia, comprising both samurai and peasants, in a rout of Tokugawa naval forces. While Ryoma's anti-Tokugawa comrades from Satsuma and Choshu prepared to crush the shogunate by military might, the "nobody" from Tosa devised a plan to avoid bloody civil war and foreign intervention. Ryoma's "Great Plan at Sea," an eight-point plan which he wrote aboard ship, called for the shogun to return the reins of government to the Imperial Court for the establishment of upper and lower houses of government; for all government measures to be based on public opinion, and decided by councilors comprised of the most able feudal lords, court nobles, and the Japanese people at large. Rather than merely saying that Ryoma was once again "blowing hot air," or that he was "crazy," there were now some among his comrades who felt betrayed. These men advocated complete annihilation of the shogunate to assure it would never rise again, and felt that Ryoma was a traitor. But Ryoma convinced one of his more level-headed friends, Goto Shojiro, who was a close aide to Yamanouchi Yodo, the influential Lord of Tosa, to urge Yodo to endorse the plan. Meanwhile, Ryoma continued to run guns for the revolutionaries, because he knew that the only way to convince the shogun to abdicate would be to demonstrate that his only alternative was military annihilation, which, of course, was no alternative at all. Lord Yodo took Goto's advice and sent Ryoma's plan to the shogun, as if it were his own brainchild. Eleven days later, on October 14, 1867, in the Grand Hall of Nijo Castle in Kyoto, as Satsuma and Choshu hastened their final war plans, the shogun announced his abdication before his adversaries had the chance to strike.
With the overthrow of the corrupt and decrepit Tokugawa regime, the "nobody" from Tosa had made good on his vow to "clean up Japan"—although, unfortunately for his country, he would pay for it with his life. Sakamoto Ryoma was assassinated one month later, on November 15, his thirty-second birthday, in a second-story room in the house of a wealthy soy dealer in Kyoto which he used as a hideout.
Equally unfortunate for Ryoma's country was that cleaning up Japan "once and for all" proved to be too long a period of time, even for a genius like Ryoma. This is why, amidst the rampant corruption in Japanese business circles today, many people in Japan have expressed their wish that a leader of Ryoma's caliber would somehow miraculously emerge. A couple years ago executives of 200 Japanese corporations were asked by Asahi Shimbun, a national daily newspaper, the question: "Who from the past millennium of world history would be most useful in overcoming Japan's current financial crisis?" Sakamoto Ryoma received more mention than any other historical figure, topping such giants as Thomas Edison, Leonardo da Vinci, Saigo Takamori, Oda Nobunaga, and the founders of NEC and Honda. Evidently many Japanese people today think their country needs a good scrubbing once again.
Copyright 2003 Romulus Hillsborough
Romulus Hillsborough is the author of RYOMA - Life of a Renaissance Samurai (Ridgeback Press, 1999) and Samurai Sketches: From the Bloody Final Years of the Shogun (Ridgeback Press, 2001). RYOMA is the only biographical novel of Sakamoto Ryoma in the English language. Samurai Sketches is a collection of historical sketches, never before presented in English, depicting men and events during the revolutionary years of mid-19th century Japan. Reviews and more information about these books are available at www.ridgebackpress.com.)
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