richard lightner

Jun 256 min read

Saigo Takamori

TOKUGAWA SHOGUNATE

“The Shogunate’s military supremacy was dependent on its ability to mobilize the domains against each other.” (New Cambridge History. 210) However, this divided Japan as it faced the threat from the West.

“The restoration-era hero Saigo Takamori, who lived in exile on Amami Oshima from 1859-1862, wrote that the daily life of the islanders seems honestly unendurable. A relatively small call of elites exploited ordinary islanders . . . Saigo, no stranger to Satsuma’s harsh dominion over its population, lamented that it was “painful to see the extent of tyranny here.” (New Cambridge History, 613)

OVERTHROWING THE SHOGUN

Consequently, Saigo Takamori negotiated peace between Satsuma and Choshu in 1864 in order to confront the Shogun. There was a concern that this internal strike aided the foreigners. (210) The Satsuma and Choshu clans set aside their differences, agreeing to “work together for the overthrow of the feudal regime.” Saigo Takamori joined the struggle. (Yanaga, Chitoshi. Japan Since Perry, 43)

Saigo, with others, believed “that a spectacular military operation against the Bakufu was necessary to capture the imagination of the nation and to facilitate the initiation of sweeping changes.” (Yanaga, Chitoshi. Japan Since Perry, 45)

In 1868, “forces of the shogunate and those of the emperor” fought. “It is assumed that the Satsuma leaders - Saigo and Okubo - were deliberately trying to provoke the shogunate into committing some act that would give them an excuse for opening hostilities against the shogunate.” (Donald Keene. Meiji and His World, 1852-1912. 125)

Edo Castle surrendered to Saigo Takamori. (Donald Keene. Meiji and His World, 1852-1912. 143)

“Saigo [Takamori] was revered as both the chief architect of the Restoration and a man of unsullied reputation; his advocacy of haichan chiken was dispensable and, once obtained, influenced many daimyos who might otherwise have protested.” (Donald Keene. Meiji and His World, 1852-1912. 199)

Saigo wanted to change the administrative structure of Japan. “He insisted that it was essential for delicate and effeminate old aristocrats to be replaced by manly and incorruptible samurai as the emperor’s mentors.” (Donald Keene. Meiji and His World, 1852-1912. 201)

Keene cites a letter Saigo wrote to his uncle expressing “satisfaction” with the fact that samurai could now “come into the presence of His Majesty.” (Donald Keene. Meiji and His World, 1852-1912. 202)

A “certain person” chastised the emperor for “wearing Western clothes.” Saigo criticized the man, saying, “Are you ignorant of the world's situation?” (Donald Keene. Meiji and His World, 1852-1912. 213)

In 1873, Saigo Takamori tried to placate Shimizu, a local anti-enlightenment leader. (New Cambridge History, 694)

KOREA

Saigo was determined that China and Korea recognize the new Meiji state. Insults from Korea caused some in the Meiji government to argue for war. Nevertheless, Saigo went to Korea to negotiate recognition. (New Cambridge History, 215)

Saigo advocated for a “professional volunteer army drawn principally from the ranks of former warriors.” (New Cambridge History, 427)

Saigo went on a mission to Korea to ameliorate tensions. (New Cambridge History 695) If the Koreans rebuffed Saigo, he and the other samurai could advocate for an invasion of Korea. (New Cambridge History. 67, vol. 3)

Some in the government wanted to use military force to impose Japanese will upon Korea. Saigo Takamori would be sent to Korea to negotiate, although he supported the invasion. Most of the Japanese leaders in 1871 supported an invasion, but the “Minister President” waited until outmaneuvered by Saigo. (Yanaga, Chitoshi. Japan Since Perry, 55)

“Saigo regarded the Korean question as an integral part of Japan’s long-term policy of national expansion and viewed Russia as her antagonist in the root too distant future. He was certain that if he failed in his mission, he could not return alive.” (Yanaga, Chitoshi. Japan Since Perry, 55-56)

There was intense conflict within the Japanese government over Korea (Yanaga, Chitoshi. Japan Since Perry, 56). The conflict was over priorities. Saigo believed a foreign military adventure would help Japan, while others wanted to concentrate on internal improvements. The emperor Meiji agreed. Thus, Saigo resigned from the government. (Yanaga, Chitoshi. Japan Since Perry, 56) Those who sided with Saigo also resigned. (Yanaga, Chitoshi. Japan Since Perry, 56-57)

“To Saigo, the Korean issue was a test of strength to see how he stood in the struggle to see how he stood in the struggle for power that he was carrying on in behalf of the old samurai class, whose cause he consistently championed.” (Yanaga, Chitoshi. Japan Since Perry, 57)

Emperor Meiji “advised” Saigo Takamori against his planned invasion of Korea. (Herbert P. Bix. Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan. 131)

Keene writes that few or no letters by Meiji exist and that there are differing points of view and things as to his contribution to Japanese development during his rule. Keene recounts Meiji’s “intervention prevented the invasion of Korea advocated by Saigo Takamori and a majority of other ministers.”

One of the Meiji leaders refused to send Saigo Takamori to Korea because of Japan’s known military weakness. (Donald Keene. Meiji and His World, 1852-1912. 251)

“Behind these actions were the frustration and anger felt by Saigo Takamori and other Kagoshima samurai when his request to be sent to Korea as an ambassador was finally rejected. (Donald Keene. Meiji and His World, 1852-1912. 270)

PRIVATE SCHOOL

In Satsuma, “Saigo started a private school in June 1874 . . .An infantry school and an artillery school were operated while instruction was given in the Chinese classics. Pupils flocked to study under the great Saigo who had become a national idol . . . It was Saigo’s plan to train promising young men for future service with the government.” He believed the government would collapse and that afterward, he could impose his pawn ideas on Japan with his own people. (Yanaga, Chitoshi. Japan Since Perry, 65)

Eventually, Saigo dominated “the administration of Kagoshima prefecture.” (Yanaga, Chitoshi. Japan Since Perry, 65-66)

Students attending Saigo’s schools were upset at reports they would lose ammunition they had stored. (Donald Keene. Meiji and His World, 1852-1912. 270)

Saigo was the “guiding spirit” of his “private schools. . . . A set of maxims, penned by Saigo himself, was displayed at each school, including one declaring that reverence for the monarch and compassion for the people were the foundation of learning.” (Donald Keene. Meiji and His World, 1852-1912. 270)

The student rebellion in Kagoshima led one Japanese leader to call for a reprimand of Saigo. (Donald Keene. Meiji and His World, 1852-1912. 276)

REBELLING AGAINST MEIJI

Saigo did not express his opposition to the government. (Donald Keene. Meiji and His World, 1852-1912. 252)

One issue was the relegation of the samurai to the status of regular citizens. Saigo attempted to change this through military action outside of Japan. (Yanaga, Chitoshi. Japan Since Perry, 55)

The conflict with Saigo troubled Meiji. Saigo was “the hero of the Restoration,” and some Meiji deeply admired him. (Donald Keene. Meiji and His World, 1852-1912. 277)

Saigo reacted to the “Meiji government’s conversion of samurai stipend to bonds, prohibition of wearing swords in public.” Following his resignation from the Meiji government, the former military commander led “about 30,000 troops in pitched battles against Meiji government conscripts.” Saigo was defeated. (New Cambridge History 68, vol. 3)

A “Satsuma army of 150,000 under Saigo [made] demands upon the government. The governor, who idolized Saigo, as did most of the people of Satsuma, turned over government money to help defray the expenditures of the military undertaking; furthermore, in his official capacity as governor, he sent word to the governors and garrison commanders on the route of march requesting them to permit Saigo and his troops safe passage through their respective jurisdictions.” However, those in charge of the Kumamoto garrison rejected it. (Yanaga, Chitoshi. Japan Since Perry, 67)

Meiji government forces routed the rebels, and Saigo had “less than four hundred men out of the original 150,000 who had started out only six months earlier.” Saigo was wounded, and his aides killed him. (Yanaga, Chitoshi. Japan Since Perry, 67-68)

After Saigo’s death, Meiji asked the empress to write a poem honoring Saigo. (Donald Keene. Meiji and His World, 1852-1912. 285)

In 1902 Emperor Meiji stopped at Kumamoto and wrote a poem honoring the 1877 battle “between the government armies and Saigo. Takamori.” (Donald Keene. Meiji and His World, 1852-1912. 582)

Saigo Takamori was a hero of the Meiji Restoration. (Ian Buruma. Inventing Japan: 1853-1964. 39) He and the other heroes, “all from Choshu and Satsuma, were steeped in the samurai ethos of loyalty, obedience, and military discipline. Saigo Takamori, one of the most romantic figures of the restoration, a large fighting man celebrated for the impressive size of his testicles, wanted to establish a warrior state in Satsuma. He became a hero to disaffected samurai, who felt left behind by modern reforms, most significantly the abolition of the samurai’s status as a hereditary cast, and in 1877 he led a bloody rebellion against the central government. The ostensible cause of the Satsuma rebellion was Japanese policy toward Korea, which Saigo deemed too soft. But the real point was that even reforms that were still far from democratic went too far for many thousands of men, who were used to more feudal ways.” Interestingly, a “reactionary” like Saigo “is still seen as a greater hero than some of his more liberal-minded colleagues.” (Ian Buruma. Inventing Japan: 1853-1964. 39)

"In 1889, Saigo Takamori was pardoned and saluted as the "last true samurai.” (Jonathan Clements. Japan at War in the Pacific: the Rise and Fall of the Japanese Empire in Asia, 1868-1945. 53)

Nevertheless, history continues to honor Saigo Takamori. (Yanaga, Chitoshi. Japan Since Perry, 68)

Comments

Different Points of View over the future of Atomic weapons.

During the Afghan War, President Donald Trump (GAG!) authorized a General to use the Mother of all Bombs, a bomb just shy of the power of an atomic bomb, on his own. Notice that this had no positive affect for the US in the outcome of the war. (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/13/world/asia/moab-mother-of-all-bombs-afghanistan.html)

There is a plethora of information about the development and use of the atomic bomb during World War II. Much of the world was astounded that the US used such a bomb on civilians. Others said, drop more.

The atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 9, 1945, “served as the symbolic coronation of American global power.” Nevertheless, the use of the atomic bomb in World War II brought international condemnation. At the Tokyo War Crimes Trials of 1946-1948, Justice Pal of India cited the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as war crimes. U.S. President Harry S. Truman responded by publicly saying that the atomic bombs were dropped “in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands of young Americans.” However, President Truman in correspondence with John Foster Dulles that his reasons for dropping the atomic bombs were the attack on Pearl Harbor and the murder of our prisoners of war. “The only language they seem to understand is the one we have been using to bombard them.” (Martin Sherwin. “Hiroshima and Modern Memory.” The Nation. October 10, 1981)

“In the summer and fall of 1945, US atomic policy left us troubled and perplexed. Roosevelt, we thought, had been committed to a policy of international understanding and conciliation. . . . Truman’s policy, however, appeared to have the opposite aim: to keep a monopoly of the atomic bomb in U.S. and British hands, and to use it as a strong trump card in tough political bargaining with the Soviet Union.” (Sherwin, Martin. A World Destroyed: the Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance. 1975. xi)

And, well before the bombings FDR and Churchill “rejected steps that might have led to the international control of atomic energy.” (Martin Sherwin. “Hiroshima and Modern Memory.” The Nation. October 10, 1981)

According to nuclear physicist Hans Bethe who worked on the Manhattan Project, “Many of us had been influenced directly or indirectly by Niels Bohr, the great Danish physicist. He argued that only international control of nuclear weapons could save the world from a nuclear arms race, and that such a race would imperil, not enhance the security of the United States and Great Britain. Many other scientists, especially at the University of Chicago Metallurgic Laboratory, at the initiative of Leo Szilard, had come independently to the same conclusion.

Martin Sherwin, George Mason University History professor who specialized in the history of nuclear weapons, wrote that, this interpretation by physicists and historian is wrong. Roosevelt decided, with Churchill, “that the bomb should remain and Anglo-American monopoly.” (Sherwin, Martin. A World Destroyed: the Atomic Bomb and the Grand Alliance. 1975. xii)

However, this is not mentioned in Hiroshima in America: fifty years of denial, by Robert Jay Lifton and Gregg Mitchell.

KOREA

There are numerous arguments about whether or not the atomic bomb should have been used in Korea, Vietnam, or other existential circumstances.

In late 1950, following their invasion of Korea, Chinese forces surrounded U.S. Marines. “Distraught himself, the chief executive (Truman), told a press conference on November 30 that nuclear bombsight be used against the enemy and seemed to indicate that the decision would be MacArthur’s.” (William Manchester. American Caesar. 608, 610; Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 30)

The U.S. developed the ability fire an “atomic shot from a cannon.” (Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 34)

“In mid-May Ike (President Dwight Eisenhower) told the [American] National Security Council that using nukes in Korea would be cheaper than conventional weaponry, and a few days later the Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended launching nuclear attacks against China.” (Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 34)

This is interesting since Eisenhower’s reaction to Hiroshima was, we didn’t have to use that awful thing on them. (Lifton, Robert Jay and Mitchell, Greg. Hiroshima in America: fifty years of denial. 1995. 213)

Operation Hudson Harbor - flying lone B-29 bombers over North Korea to simulate a dropping of an atomic bomb. North Korean leaders must have had “steel nerves” as this simulation was eerily similar to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Operation Hudson Harbor concluded that the use of atomic weapons would not be “useful” as it was difficult to identify “large masses of enemy troops.” (Bruce Cumings. The Korean War: a History. 2010. p. 157-159)

The United Nations/United States forces faced defeat in Korea but Truman looked strong because he “threatened to use the atom bomb against China.” However, this “made peace talks virtually impossible.” (Stone, I.F. The Hidden History of the Korean War. 213)

Major General Emmett (“Rosy”) O’Donnell, commander of the Far East Air Force’s Bomber Command . . . [stated that] “We have never been permitted to bomb what are the real strategic targets, the enemy’s real sources of supply.” He said that the strategic bombing commanded been “designed to deliver the atomic offensive to the heart of the enemy” and indicated very clearly that he thought the bomb should have been used against the Chinese.”” (Stone, I.F. The Hidden History of the Korean War. 245)

RICHARD NIXON

Richard Barnet, former State Department aide, activist and scholar, who founded the Institute for Policy Studies (Wikipedia) warned “of the danger that the United States government might resort to the use of nuclear weapons. Barnet then cites Vice President Richard Nixon speaking to the Executive Club of Chicago on March 17, 1955 as saying,

“The weapons which were used during the Korean War and World War II are obsolete. Our artillery and our tactical Air Force in the Pacific are now equipped with atomic explosives which can and will be used on military targets with precision and effectiveness.

“It is foolish to talk about the possibility that the weapons which might be used in the event war breaks out in the Pacific would be limited to the conventional Korean and World War II types of explosives. Our forces could not fight an effective war in the Pacific with those types of explosives if they wanted to. Tactical atomic explosives are now conventional and will be used against the military targets of any aggressive force.”

Of course, we are not aggressors by threatening China or invading Vietnam.

VIET NAM

1964 American Republican Presidential candidate Senator Goldwater of Arizona was a reserve Air Force General and “suggested that the United States could isolate the Vietcong in South Vietnam any bombing the supply routes connecting China and North Vietnam.” He also proposed using nuclear weapons “to clear the jungles where the Vietcong were presumably hiding. The public reaction to those notions was one of horrified alarm.” (Thomas Powers, The War at Home. 2) It turns out that the United States bombed Southeast Asia the equivalent of many atomic bombs through out the war.

“Although Goldwater was finally persuaded to stop talking about nuclear weapons.”

Although Goldwater’s advocacy of atomic weapons scared people his idea to win the war did not. Johnson portrayed himself as “responsible” as opposed to Goldwater who he implied would get us all killed. (Thomas Powers, The War at Home. 9)

Noted military writer Hanson Baldwin believed that the US should use its overwhelming technological power to counter communism even if that meant nuclear weapons. Of course, only for “defensive purposes.” “If we cannot do this, he says, we had better “call it quits.” (Noam Chomsky, At War with Asia. 52)

General Curtis LeMay advocated the use of nuclear weapons to end the conflict with communism once and for all. “We ought to nuke the chinks. . . . We are swatting flies when we should be going after the manure pile.” (Thomas Powers. The War at Home. 40; Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. Lyndon B. Johnson: the Exercise of Power. 538)

So, there is pretty much agreement that the use of the atom bomb was on the table. The horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki completely ignored.

In 1954 the United States “assuming the Chinese Communists intervene would engage in a “highly selective atomic offensive.” (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 46) However, if the “Chinese Communists do not intervene” then the use of atomic weapons would occur if it would aid the US in the war. (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 47)

McNaughton drafted a “Proposed Course of Action” to McNamara. In his long list of actions McNaughton noted risks. One was the “escalation to the use of nuclear weapons.” (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 442-445, passim)

Presidential assistant for national security, Walt. W. Rostow, wrote a memorandum on May 6, 1967, analyzing U.S. bombing strategy in Viet Nam. One of his conclusions was “we do not want a nuclear confrontation over Viet Nam.” (Pentagon Papers. New York Times. 1971. 585, 588)

Saigo Takamori

Comments

Atomic Bomb

Viet Nam War

Subscribe here to get my latest posts