And we’re not talking Tom Cruise, we’re talking Saigo Takamori, born in 1828 in Kagoshima, the son of a low-ranking samurai. After his military training he served under Shimazu Nariakura the local Satsuma daimyo. When Shimazu died, Saigo was disgraced and exiled. He attempted suicide, but maybe his heart wasn’t into it because he was reinstated and returned to become a leader of the Satsuma-Choshi forces who overthrew the Tokugawa shogunate and restored the emperor to power after a thousand years of merely being symbolical. So Saigo was a major figure in the Meiji Restoration (Meiji means “enlightened leader”), the period of history that ended feudalism and brought modernization to Japan.
But what is fascinating about Saigo, (and a number of his friends known as the “Kagoshima Boys” who were responsible for the modern changes), is how they resisted the Meiji regime when a national army was created. This basically resulted in the dismantling the samurai class. In 1877 Saigo led what has come to be known as the Satsumo Rebellion. His small force of 25,000 men was overwhelmed by imperial forces and he retreated with 300 men to the hills of Shirayama overlooking the sea near Kagoshima Castle. Armed with swords against artillery fire, Saigo’s forces were massacred. His decapitated body was discovered with the other leaders of the rebellion who, according to battlefield custom, cut off each other’s heads when seppuku wasn’t possible.
According to Ian Buruma, Saigo’s defeat is part of a Japanese tradition ennobling the “triumph of failure” where the true heroes are the ones who never had a chance but chose to die honorably.
All this was detailed when we visited the Reimeikin Kagoshima History Museum and Fine Arts Center, a large building dominating a plaza on the site of the old Kagoshima Castle where fat fish swim in the gutter-moat surrounding the wall.
In the museum (where it takes three extensive floors to lay out Kagoshima’s history) we were practically the only visitors. At one point I came across an explanation of Shigendō, a syncretic Esoteric Buddhist religion evolving from the 7th century Nara Period. Apparently, and this I couldn’t fail to ignore, the final purpose for Shingendō is for “practitioners to find supernatural power and save themselves…while treading through steep mountain ranges.”
Masks from nearby island cultures stole the show.
