Sakuma Shozan — "Eastern Ethics, Western Science"

Keep Japan's spirit, and take up the West's technology. That was the argument of Sakuma Shozan, who trained many of the era's finest minds and was assassinated.

Contents

What Sakuma Shozan Did

Shozan was a leading thinker and military scientist of the Bakumatsu.

His argument, in a phrase, was "Eastern ethics, Western science" — building on Eastern morality and spirit while adopting Western science and practical learning. "Science" here means technology and applied knowledge, not the modern sense of art.

Neither expulsion nor unconditional opening: keep Japan's spirit and strengthen the country with Western technology. That was Shozan's position, and it spread through the Bakumatsu by way of his many students.

He was born in 1811 into a low-ranking samurai family of Matsushiro domain in Shinano.

His Students

Shozan's influence worked through his students.

His school produced a remarkable number of important figures. Katsu Kaishu, Yoshida Shoin, Hashimoto Sanai, Sakamoto Ryoma for a time, and others who would move the Bakumatsu, learned Western military science under him.

Yoshida Shoin is the best known. Behind Shoin's attempt to smuggle himself aboard a Black Ship lay Shozan's teaching. Shoin was putting into practice Shozan's idea of seeing the West with one's own eyes.

When the attempt failed, Shozan was punished as an accomplice — a teacher bearing the consequences of a student's act.

An Arrogant Genius

Shozan was a man of intense self-regard.

He was certain of his own gifts and did not hide it. He often behaved as though he looked down on others, and made many enemies. An anecdote has him declaring openly that the great talents of the realm numbered himself and a mere handful of others.

That arrogance was the reverse side of the advancement of his thought. The awareness that he had seen the importance of the West earlier than anyone made him haughty — and, in fact, much of what he foresaw was right.

The trait may also have put him in danger. But the recorded motive for his killing was political and ideological — his advocacy of opening the country, of Western learning, and of court-shogunate cooperation — and no source establishes his character itself as the cause.

Opening the Country, and Assassination

After the arrival of the Black Ships, Shozan argued for opening the country: expulsion was impossible, and there was no course but to learn from the West and grow strong.

But it was the very height of the cry for expulsion. To argue for opening the country meant risking one's life.

In 1864 Shozan was assassinated in Kyoto, aged fifty-three (fifty-four by the traditional count). His killers were believers in expulsion.

A man who preached "Eastern ethics, Western science" and argued for opening to the West was cut down by men who hated it. Yokoi Shonan was later assassinated by expulsionists for the same views. It was an age in which thinkers who advocated opening the country fell to expulsionist blades.

How He Is Judged

Shozan occupies the unusual position of being eclipsed by the very magnitude of his students.

Katsu Kaishu and Yoshida Shoin each carved their own names into history. Their teacher is often spoken of simply as "the man who trained them."

Yet the reach of his own thought was large. Thinking of spirit and technology as separable, and trying to join them — this became one template for Japan's later modernization. The posture of adopting Western technology while trying to keep something Japanese is a theme that recurs again and again after Meiji.

Shozan set out its prototype early in the Bakumatsu.

Timeline

For his students see Katsu Kaishu and Yoshida Shoin; for a thinker assassinated for the same views, Yokoi Shonan.