Sakamoto Ryoma

Sakamoto Ryōma ( Japanese 坂本龍馬 ; * January 3, 1836 in Tosa-gun , Tosa Province (today: Kōchi , Kōchi Prefecture ), † December 10, 1867 in Kyoto ) was a Japanese samurai from the Daimyat Tosa in the Tosa Province. He pioneered the Meiji Restoration that took place in 1868 .

His actual name ( imina ) was Naokage ( 直陰 ) or later Naonari ( 直柔 ). As a pseudonym he used Saidani Umetaro ( 才谷梅太郎 ).

The political situation

Since 1635, Japan was by the Tokugawa - shoguns ruled. In order to maintain their power over the approximately 260 daimyats , the Tokugawa had followed a strict policy of isolation.

However, the political, economic and social structure of the western world was subject to fundamental changes. The rapid development in the fields of science, industry and technology as well as the incipient capitalism determined the worldview of Europe and America, both of which endeavored to expand their domains. Large parts of Asia were taken by the Europeans. India became an English colony, China a semi-colony. Japan also moved into the field of vision of the conquerors.

Sakamoto Ryoma

With the arrival of Matthew Perry in 1853, who wanted to force an opening of Japan, the island nation was exposed to massive external pressure. As a technically backward country compared to the Western powers, Japan could not ignore Perry's fleet or even drive it away. Given the military superiority, the Shogun , who was the political ruler, had to make various concessions, such as opening some ports to foreign ships. The Shogun's giving in to foreign countries led to resentment among the population and various Samurai clans and thus weakened its position.

The Japanese soon divided opinions on the political situation. Calls against the Shogunate rule and the Europeans and Americans who had come into the country were loud, which found their expression in the Sonnō jōi movement. Others in turn supported the Shogun, but that did not mean that they also approved of the foreigners.

biography

Family background

Sakamoto Ryōma was born in 1836 (according to the then still valid lunar calendar on November 15, 1835) as the son of Sakamoto Hachihei-Naotari in Kōchi on Shikoku in the province of Tosa . His family was a lower-ranking samurai family ( goshi ) who got rich by trading kimono, home-brewed sake and as pawnbrokers and who had bought the goshi (lowest non-aristocratic samurai rank).

He was the youngest of five children. He had a brother and three sisters. He was considered a fearful and slow-learning boy who cried quickly and wet the bed. When he was teased in writing class, he drew his sword and was expelled from school. So his sisters gave him tutoring in literature and swordsmanship. Despised as a shame by most family members, only his mother understood his gentle nature. In his childhood he made friends with Okada Izō ( 岡田以蔵 ) and Takechi Zuizan ( 武市瑞山 , nickname: Takechi Hanpeita, 武市半平太 ).

youth

When Ryōma was ten years old, a noble girl he knew invited him to take part in a procession in which the daimyo was also present. When friends saw Ryōma, they wanted to run to him, where they drew the daimyō's annoyance with their very poor and somewhat dirty appearance because they bothered him. The children were killed instantly by samurai, as was the right of the warrior caste. Thereupon Ryōma pounced on the daimyō and was saved from death only by the intercession of the noble girl. His whole family was punished for this and the boy was imprisoned. When his mother brought him food forbidden, she told him when he asked that he had done nothing wrong. As a result, his mother was thrown in prison, where she died shortly afterwards because she had suffered from tuberculosis for a long time . Ryōma was released.

This experience marked a turning point in Ryōma's life, who had now decided to become stronger and to eliminate the class differences in Japan. He began to seriously learn the art of sword, and in 1848 joined the Oguri-ryū, which had a dojo in the neighborhood. In 1853 he completed his training with the Menkyo-Kaiden certificate (complete tradition of the school). He was allowed by the clan to travel to Edo (today's Tokyo ) in order to improve his swordsmanship there by learning the Hokushin Ittō-ryū Hyōhō in the famous Chiba-Dōjō under its chief Chiba Sadakichi Masamichi. During his stay in Edo he was allowed to live as Daihyō of the Tosa clan in its residence. There is no historical evidence whether Sakamoto mastered the Hokushin Ittō-ryū completely; however, it is documented that he teaches as Shihan in the Chiba-Dōjō together with Chiba Jutaro Kazutane, in which he found a good friend. A year later, Ryoma went back to Tosa. After witnessing the arrival of Perry's Black Ships in 1853 and being very impressed, he learned a great deal about the West from Kawada Shoryo. Even earlier he is said to have learned a lot about the western world from the shipwrecked American John Eric.

In 1858 he returned to Edo and completed his training as an excellent swordsman. In 1861 he joined the Tosa Royalist Party ( 土佐勤王党 , Tosa kinnōtō ), which was led by Takechi Zuizan and which advocated the expulsion of all foreigners, the return of power to the emperor ( Tennō ) and the overthrow of the Pronounced shoguns. (→ Sonnō jōi )

Katsu Kaishu

Katsu Kaishu (1823–1899)

Unsatisfied with the circumstances, Sakamoto Ryōma left his province in 1862 without permission and thus his family clan. In October of the next year he met Katsu Kaishu , a loyal follower of the Shogun and a fleet representative. He became his greatest admirer and called him the "greatest man in Japan." Kaishu obtained a pardon for Ryōma from Tosa, even if Sakamoto did not follow the invitation to come back and thus became Rōnin again.

Through Kaishu, Sakamoto was convinced that the most important thing was to introduce progress in Japan and, above all, to modernize the fleet in order to be able to assert oneself effectively against the foreigners. He then worked together in 1863, with Kaishu it in Kobe , the Naval Academy Kobe Naval Operations Training School to establish where he and others studied under her mentor shipping. In the same year, Sakamoto became the head of the school.

During his time in Kyoto, thanks to Kaishu, Sakamoto made the acquaintance of Bakufu officials and the Shinsengumi , who were loyal to the Shogun, as well as Ishin Shishi such as Saigō Takamori , Katsura Kogoro or Yokoi Shōnan who wanted to overthrow him. He also got to know foreigners.

Despite his admiration for Katsu, who was loyal to the shogun, he made a plan to overthrow the shogunate and wrote to his sister that he would "clean up Japan once and for all . " His aim was also to prevent the Western powers from making Japan a colony or semi-colony, as had been done with China (see Unequal Treaties ). He wrote to his sister analogously: “Even if the shogunate officials now wield a lot of power, I will win a few daimyō for my cause so that we can start to think about the welfare of Japan, and not just about the imperial court. Then I'll go to Edo with my friends to put down these vile officials. "

Sakamoto Ryōma had a very precise idea of his life from an early age. He stated in a letter to his sister: “I don't expect to be there very long. But neither will I die like an average person. I won't be ready to die until big changes finally come; when, even if I'm still alive, I'm no longer needed. But since I'm pretty devious, I won't die that easily. Seriously, even if I was only born a potato collector in Tosa, a nobody, I am meant to bring great innovations to this country. "

The alliance of Chōshū and Satsuma

Sakamoto believed that the only way to avoid colonization was to move rapidly to modernize Japan. However, this stood in the way of the Shogun and the country and social structure with its countless provinces , daimyats and social classes. They stood for backwardness and inequality.

But Ryōma did not have the means for a revolution or the like. When he left his homeland, the province of Tosa, he became a rōnin , an abandoned samurai, and lost all support from his daimyo. So he decided to use other daimyats for his plans.

After all, there were already various endeavors, associations and organizations, above all the Ishin Shishi , who wanted to overthrow the Shogun. However, they had not crossed the boundaries of their respective province or daimyate and often warred against each other, like the powerful daimyates Chōshū and Satsuma , both of whom had been badly enemies since the Sengoku period , who therefore had to use their powers for their respective disputes and not could act effectively.

Sakamoto Ryōma realized that he could only overthrow the Shogun if he had a correspondingly large force. Therefore, the two daimyats should unite their forces. Together with his friend Nakaoka Shintarō he tried to move the leader of the Chōshū Ishin Shishi, Katsura Kogoro , and the leader of the rebels from Satsuma, Saigō Takamori , to an agreement. After a year of intensive planning and persuasion, the alliance really came into being in January 1866. Tosa also joined the alliance later that year. This military alliance hastened the overthrow of the shogunate.

The Terada-ya assassination

The Teradaya

Although this alliance was not yet known, Sakamoto came into the field of view of police officers who served the Shogun loyally. The night after the agreement was sealed, Sakamoto and a samurai from Chōshū, who was his bodyguard, were attacked by police at the Terada-ya inn in Kyoto. This action is very famous in Japan.

A young employee named O-Ryō is said to have just been in the bathtub when she heard the police officers. She is said to have run to Sakamoto's room immediately, naked as she was, to warn him. In the ensuing fight, Sakamoto defended himself with a Smith & Wesson revolver while his bodyguard was armed with a spear. Then both should have escaped through the back door.

marriage

Photo from 1867

Just as famous is the marriage of Sakamoto Ryōmas and O-Ryōs, which took place a little later. They are considered to be the "pioneers" of the custom of the honeymoon in Japan, as Sakamoto and his newlywed wife undertook a three-month trip through Kyūshū to recover from a battle injury in hot springs in the Kirishima Mountains. A memorial to the couple in Kagoshima commemorates this.

However, Sakamoto had no direct descendants. However, he had a nephew, Takamatsu Taro, who worked for the Kaientai company and apparently continued the line of the Sakamotos.

After Ryōma's death, O-Ryō stayed with his sister Otome in Kōchi. But since both women were very strong-willed, they did not get along well, so O-ryō went away, remarried and settled in Yokosuka . She died in 1906 at the age of 66.

The "8-point program"

The trading company Kameyama shachu in Nagasaki , which he founded in 1865 with the help of Saigō Takamori , became Kaientai in the spring of 1867 , Japan's first modern company and forerunner of Mitsubishi . Everyone could have goods shipped there, regardless of their stand. Located in Nagasaki, Kaientai was a shipping and shipping company through which Sakamoto smuggled weapons for Chōshū and Satsuma. While the allies from both daimyats were preparing to overthrow the Shogun through military action, Sakamoto pursued other plans.

As early as June 1866, the samurai realized that a bloody civil war had to be prevented. When Ryōma commanded a warship in the naval battle of Shimonoseki , Ryōma devised the "Senchu Hassaku", the "8-point program". This provided that the Shogun should leave power to the imperial court, that a parliament with upper and lower houses should be formed and that all government measures should be based on public opinion and should be taken by councils consisting of the most capable feudal lords, Court nobles and people of the Japanese people in general.

With Gotō Shōjirō's help, he was able to move Yamanouchi Yōdō , the influential feudal lord of Tosa, to support the plan and present the Shōgun as an idea of his own. Meanwhile, the Satsuma and Chōshū allies demonstrated by force of arms that the shōgun's only alternative to the plan would be to force him to abdicate. Eleven days later, on October 14, 1867, the Shogun announced his abdication in the Great Hall of Nijo Castle in Kyoto, just in time to prevent the military strike of Satsuma and Choshus. The "8-point program" formulated by him also had a major impact on the imperial "5 oaths charter" of 1868. To prevent further disputes, Sakamoto suggested that the former Shogun be used as an official in the Meiji government, what however, all sides refused.

death

Sakamoto Ryōma's tomb in Kyoto

Sakamoto Ryōma was murdered on December 10, 1867 (November 15, 1867) together with Nakaoka Shintarō in the Omiya , the shop of a soybean seller in Kyoto. The perpetrator or perpetrators were never caught. Sakamoto's attempts to please everyone, his relationships with the Ishin Shishi, the Shogun as well as foreigners gave rise to mistrust. He was suspected of trying to ingratiate himself with everyone. Although he turned down a post as a civil servant in the new government, many feared his influence. Hence, it is believed that either the Shinsengumi or his own men could be responsible for his death, but nothing has been proven. According to his own prediction, he did not live to see the Meiji Restoration , as it was only finally initiated by the Boshin War . Although he was an excellent swordsman, he is said not to have killed a single person in his life. His grave can be found in Kyoto and can also be visited.

Meaning of his life

Sakamoto Ryōma is still revered as a national hero in Tosa today. There are several museums and monuments commemorating him in and around Kōchi, including a famous statue on Katsura-hama Beach.

The National Museum in Kyoto has, among other things, a screen from the hostel room on which traces of Sakamoto Ryōma's blood can be found. In 2005, a large special exhibition was held there for his 170th birthday, in which numerous personal letters could also be seen.

Most Japanese people are familiar with Sakamoto Ryōma and there are people who call themselves “Ryōma fans”. To this end z. B. Former Prime Minister Obuchi Keizo and Son Masayoshi , President of Softbank Corporation . Every year a big fan meeting is held in one of the largest cities in Japan.

A few years ago, directors of 200 companies were asked by the newspaper Asahi Shimbun , who from the last millennium of world history would be most suitable to overcome Japan's economic crisis. Sakamoto Ryōma was given preference over many other important personalities such as Oda Nobunaga , Leonardo Da Vinci or Thomas Edison .

On November 15, 2003, Kōchi Sakamoto Ryōma Airport was renamed in honor of Kōchi-Ryōma Airport.

The main central belt asteroid (2835) Ryoma is named after him.

In literature and film

Since Japan likes to look back on the time of the Meiji Restoration as a glorious and important period, the media also became interested in the personalities of the Bakumatsu and the Meiji period.

Shiba Ryōtarō dedicates his popular novel Ryōma ga yuku to Sakamoto , originally published in sequels from 1962 to 1966, and Ryōma is also mentioned in his historical novel Moeyo Ken about the Shinsengumi , published from 1962 to 1964.

Kuroki Kazuo describes in the 1974 film The Assassination of Ryoma ( Ryōma ansatsu ) the last three days of Ryōma's life. Also in Oi! Ryoma! From 1992 by Sasakawa Hiroshi and Kagawa Yutaka and in Bakumatsu seishun graffiti: Rōnin Sakamoto Ryōma from 1986, produced by Yoshitaka Kawai , he is the main character. He is also called in Karakuri Den Hio Senki from 2000 by Amino Tetsuro and in Ukigumo from 1982 by Masaki Mamoru .

Life Sakamoto Ryoma is the focus of taiga Doramas ( 大河ドラマ ) of 2010. Under the title Ryoma the ( 龍馬伝 ) the public television illuminated NHK Japan's path to modernization from the perspective of "series Heroes" Ryoma. The script for the historical drama, which runs for a year, comes from the pen of the well-known screenwriter Fukuda Yasushi.

Ryōma is a minor character in the manga Peace Maker Kurogane by Nanae Chrono , who mainly deals with the Shinsengumi . He is portrayed there as a funny, eccentric person of African descent. His intention to do good and not to fall out with anyone is emphasized. He also appears in the computer game and anime Kidō Shinsengumi Moeyo Ken .

literature

Romulus Hillsborough: Ryoma: Life of a Renaissance Samurai . Ridgeback Press, 1999, ISBN 0-9667401-7-3 .
Romulus Hillsborough: Sakamoto Ryoma: The Indispensable “Nobody” . In: Tokyo Journal. 2002.
Marius B. Jansen: Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration . Columbia University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-231-10173-2 .

credentials

^ Romulus Hillsborough, Samurai Revolution. Tuttle Publishing (March 25, 2014), ISBN 4-8053-1235-1
^ Lutz D. Schmadel : Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . Fifth Revised and Enlarged Edition. Ed .: Lutz D. Schmadel. 5th edition. Springer Verlag , Berlin , Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 978-3-540-29925-7 , pp. 186 (English, 992 pages, link.springer.com [ONLINE; accessed on September 18, 2019] Original title: Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . First edition: Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg 1992): “1982 WF. Discovered 1982 Nov. 20 by T. Seki at Geisei. "

Web links

Commons : Sakamoto Ryōma - collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikisource: Sakamoto Ryōma Letters - Sources and full texts (Japanese)

personal data
SURNAME	Sakamoto, ryoma
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	坂本龍馬 (Japanese); Sakamoto Naokage (formerly real name); 坂本直陰 (Japanese, former real name); Sakamoto Naonari (later real name); 坂本直柔 (Japanese, later real name); Saidani Umetaro (pseudonym); 才谷梅太郎 (Japanese, pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Japanese samurai, pioneer of the Meiji Restoration
DATE OF BIRTH	January 3, 1836
PLACE OF BIRTH	Tosa-gun , Tosa Province (today: Kōchi , Kōchi Prefecture ), Japan
DATE OF DEATH	December 10, 1867
Place of death	Kyoto , Japan

[1] Romulus Hillsborough, Samurai Revolution. Tuttle Publishing (March 25, 2014), ISBN 4-8053-1235-1

[2] Lutz D. Schmadel : Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . Fifth Revised and Enlarged Edition. Ed .: Lutz D. Schmadel. 5th edition. Springer Verlag , Berlin , Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 978-3-540-29925-7 , pp. 186 (English, 992 pages, link.springer.com [ONLINE; accessed on September 18, 2019] Original title: Dictionary of Minor Planet Names . First edition: Springer Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg 1992): “1982 WF. Discovered 1982 Nov. 20 by T. Seki at Geisei. "