Saigō Takamori — The Satsuma Giant Who Led the Restoration and Died in Revolt
Saigō Takamori, who took "revere heaven, love people" as his motto, was both a central figure in the Meiji Restoration and, in the end, its greatest rebel. He embodies two opposing faces: the hero of the Restoration and the man who rose against the very government he helped create.
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From a lower samurai of Satsuma
Saigō was born in 1828 into a lower-ranking samurai family of the Satsuma domain. Recognized by the lord Shimazu Nariakira, he rose to prominence and came to play a major part in domain affairs and in the politics of the Bakumatsu.
After Nariakira's death he fell from favor and endured exile — his early life was far from smooth. The fortitude and breadth of character forged in those hardships would later sustain him.
Overthrow and the bloodless surrender of Edo
As Satsuma's military leader, Saigō drove the movement to topple the shogunate, backed by the Satsuma–Chōshū Alliance that figures like Sakamoto Ryōma had brokered.
In the Boshin War he served as a staff officer of the new imperial army. Most famous of all was the bloodless surrender of Edo. In 1868 Saigō met the shogunal retainer Katsu Kaishū and agreed to hand over Edo Castle without setting the city ablaze. Sparing a metropolis of a million people from becoming a battlefield is credited with saving countless lives.
A break with the new government
After the Restoration, Saigō served as a councillor in the new government. But conflict deepened over the pace of modernization and the treatment of the former samurai class.
In 1873, defeated in a political crisis over foreign policy, Saigō resigned and returned to his native Kagoshima. Many samurai who admired him gathered there, forming an independent power base around his private academies.
The Satsuma Rebellion and Shiroyama
The drive toward a modern state stoked the resentment of samurai losing their privileges across the country. In 1877 the Kagoshima samurai rose up, with Saigō raised to their head — the Satsuma Rebellion.
Against a government army equipped with modern weapons, the samurai forces were gradually driven back. In the end Saigō made his last stand on the hill of Shiroyama in Kagoshima, where his life closed. He was forty-nine. Japan's last civil war ended, ironically, with one of the Restoration's greatest architects as its enemy.
After his death, Saigō's image was retold many times over. Hero or rebel? It is a life best read by returning to the historical record. Other figures are gathered in Bakumatsu Figures.
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