The year is 1877. On Shiroyama Hill, a band of 40 samurai, most of them badly wounded,
are facing Japan’s 30,000-man imperial army. The samurai leader, Saigō Takamori,
started this battle with 4,000 men. After 99% of his troops are killed, he realizes defeat may be
imminent. Disheartened and humiliated, he slowly raises his sword and prepares to commit seppuku,
thus ending the bloody last stand of the samurai. But how did it come to this in the first place?
In order to understand why the samurai went extinct,
it’s important to understand who the samurai were in the first place. In Japanese,
the word “samurai” means “those who serve”, and it fits the original role of this warrior class
to a tee. Samurai started to become a thing during the feudal Heian Period (794-1185),
employed by wealthy landowners to serve them and defend their land.
At that time, Japan was less of a unified empire, and more of a collection of militaristic clans
under the emperor in Kyoto. The strongest clan at the time, the Fujiwara clan,
shut out a lot of wealthy people throughout the empire who each thought they deserved more power.
In turn, these landowners were prepared to sacrifice countless lives to acquire it.
In the 1100s, the imperial court in Kyoto gradually lost power and wealthy heads of
local clans and landowners - known as daimyō - started to rule over their different regions
instead. With this new decentralized system of government, power struggles became common between
the clans, and the samurai became indispensable, solidifying themselves as a separate social class.
The biggest conflict of all was The Gempei War, from 1180 to 1185,
between the Taira and Minamoto clans, who wanted to control the entire state of Japan. The glory
the samurai acquired during that war leveled them up from warrior to ruling class. Thus,
the Kamakura Shogunate - essentially a military dictatorship - was established.
In order to maintain the elite status of the samurai, war hero and control freak
Minamoto Yoritomo decreed that no one could be called a samurai until Yoritomo himself had
permitted it. He knew that he could only hold onto his rule
through military strength and intimidation, so it was important for Yoritomo to create
a powerful warrior class that would be looked up to and feared by the people.
This was around the time that Zen Buddhism was gaining traction in Japan, and the rules and
moral codes of Buddhism seemed to align quite well with a disciplined military life. The austere,
simple life principles of Buddhism morphed with the samurai’s training to eventually
become the bushido code of conduct, “the way of the warrior”. This code emphasized honor
and loyalty to each samurai’s daimyō above all. This code also instituted the idea of seppuku,
the ceremonial killing of oneself in order to preserve honor in the
face of failure. As you can see, the samurai took their oath of loyalty very seriously.
From the 13th century onwards, Mongol invasions and clan rebellions would launch Japan into yet
another cycle of territorial clans battling for power. Eventually,
in the late 15th century, this led to another decentralization of power,
which once again strengthened the role of lords and their samurai even further.
The problem is that the roots of the samurais’ eventual destruction were already present in
this vicious cycle. The constant conflicts and transfers of power they depended on,
the unwillingness to accept any central form of government,
and their strict adherence to bushido planted the seeds of their eventual demise as a group.
Under the centralized Tokugawa Shogunate during the Edo Period, from 1603 to 1867,
the samurai were still powerful, but in this time of relative peace, their day
to day roles were slowly changing. Though they were still theoretically career military men,
they more often found themselves knee-deep in bureaucratic work and even farming activities
than actually fighting. They increasingly became unhappy about their lot in life,
unsurprising when you think that these men were trained to slash people down
with swords but instead found themselves filling out government forms in triplicate.
In the midst of this gradual disintegration of the warrior class, the arrival of Commodore Matthew
Perry to Japan in 1853 signaled the beginning of the end to the samurai way of life. Perry’s
offer to open up trade between Japan and the U.S. divided the country. On the one hand,
Shogun Tokugawa Iemochi was in favor of opening up the ports. On the other, Emperor Kōmei,
who had largely become a figurehead at this point rather than holding any real power,
objected, issuing an order to “expel the barbarians''. Unsurprisingly,
“the barbarians” did not listen. However, several samurai clans did.
The Chōshū and Satsuma clans were already dissatisfied with the Shogun. So when Shogun
Tokugawa decided that Japan should open up to the West, the anti-foreigner Chōshū and Satsuma
allied themselves with the Emperor…sort of a, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” situation.
The Chōshū attempted to take over Kyoto in order to restore the Emperor’s power over the Shogun,
but were instead attacked and defeated by Shogunate forces,
an event known as the Hamaguri Gate Rebellion.
The Shogunate forces chased and attacked the Chōshū in
retaliation. A couple of years later, they attacked the Chōshū clan again,
which had joined forces with the Satsuma clan this time. With the extra manpower,
the two clans defeated the Shogun’s army and thus countered his first victory.
If you’re already getting tired of this repetitive fighting, don’t worry,
so was the universe, as both Shogun Tokugawa Iemochi and Emperor Komei unexpectedly died
right after this battle. Emperor Meiji and Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu stepped right up
to fill their places, and initially it seemed like they would form a better relationship.
In 1867, the new Shogun declared his official resignation, retaining a working position in
the government while deferring to the Emperor for decision-making power. He
hoped this action would keep the Tokugawa clan in the new emperor’s good graces,
and for a while the clan worked closely with the emperor as part of his government.
This strange power-sharing carried on for a while until the 1868 Meiji Restoration,
an event whose name you probably vaguely remember from high school
history. A coup made the emperor the sole, supreme authority of Japan. And yet,
this further demotion in power for the Shogun still wasn’t enough for some.
The Chōshū and Satsuma clans, still mad about all those bloody battles and expeditions against
them a couple of years ago, persuaded the Meiji government to take Shogun Tokugawa
Yoshinobu’s lands from him and strip him of the title of Shogun altogether. As you might
expect, the Shogun - former Shogun? - was incredibly unhappy about this development,
especially as he had already voluntarily abdicated some power to appease the emperor.
The former Shogun decided that he wasn’t going to take the disrespect,
and wanted his old position back. As the Emperor had a strict “no takesies backsies” rule,
the clans who supported him readied themselves for battle. On January 27, 1868, the Shogun
led his troops against the Satsuma-Chōshū imperial alliance waiting for him at Kyoto.
Though the Shogun had the advantage when it came to numbers - they outnumbered the
opposing clans three to one - they also had inferior weapons. The imperial army
had picked up some brand new Gatling guns and Armstrong howitzers. The heavy
firepower took the Shogun’s forces by surprise and led to a stalemate.
Eventually, the imperial clan alliance captured Edo and put
the Shogun under house arrest. What the Satsuma and Chōshū clans didn’t
yet know, is that their support of the emperor would lead to their own undoing.
Emperor Meiji was not like his predecessor, something the samurai clans might have figured
out had they not proclaimed undying loyalty to the emperor’s throne. He decided he was
going to make some big changes in Japanese society in order to align with Western ideals.
First off, he declared that all classes were equal. As the samurai were part
of the Japanese caste system, this decision caused some friction with the samurai class.
Secondly, in 1869, Emperor Meiji removed the local landowners,
the daimyō, from power, and in 1871 he made their former domains
into Japanese prefectures. As the samurai had largely existed to serve the daimyō,
this move rendered them even more useless than they had previously felt during peacetime.
Thirdly, the emperor made the decision to start using conscription for military service in order
to create one large imperial army. Though this was meant to unify Japan even further,
it also defeated the samurais’ whole reason for existence. After all,
if every Japanese man could become a warrior, what made the samurai special?
His last reform, and perhaps the most dishonorable in the view of the samurai,
the Haitorei Edict in 1876 made it illegal for samurai to carry swords.
It may be hard for us to imagine the grave insult this was to the samurai of the time,
whose identity was intricately wrapped up with their weapons, but it was seen as a deeply
dishonorable move against them. In fact, in 1588, a former Shogun had made it illegal for
anyone but samurai to carry swords, giving the samurais’ use of them a special honor.
For many samurai, especially Saigō Takamori, leader of the Satsuma Clan,
the Haitorei Edict was the last straw. He had supported Emperor Meiji on the basis of,
“revere the emperor, expel the barbarians”. Now he saw the Emperor not only inviting the “barbarians”
from the West into Japan, but also threatening their entire way of life, and obliterating the
samurais’ traditions. If the Emperor wanted their swords, he was going to have to come and get them.
Saigō Takamori led a group of 20,000 to 30,000 rebel samurai to Kunamoto Castle
on the island of Kyushu. Here, they laid siege to the castle. Angered by the siege,
Emperor Meiji strengthened the initial defense force of 3 to 4 thousand men with his 60 to 100
thousand strong imperial army. This siege and confrontation, adhering to the samurai code of
conduct of fighting enemies directly and face to face, was one of Takamori’s big mistakes,
as his troops could not win against the much bigger imperial army in a one to one battle.
The imperial army, mostly made up of Japanese men who had previously been peasants and thus
placed much lower than the samurai in Japanese social hierarchies, surrounded Takamori’s
clan. The samurai fled back to their base at Kagoshima, with only 400 of the approximately
20,000 man rebellion now remaining. Realizing that the army was coming
for them at their stronghold, the samurai made one last stand on Shiroyama Hill,
right outside their base. Though the samurai were prepared to give the battle their all,
they had brought swords to a gunfight. Yet another way the bushido code of conduct failed them,
as the samurais were attached by a deep sense of loyalty and tradition to military weapons
like bows, swords, and spears that would all but guarantee their eventual loss.
The imperial army attacked with heavy artillery, both from their infantry division and the warships
waiting in the nearby harbor. The fighting started at 3 a.m. on September 23, and in just
three hours, 40 of the 400 samurai remained. As dawn broke, Saigō Takamori, the leader of
the Satsuma samurai, realized that all was lost. Looking around at his fallen men,
he made his way over to a peaceful spot with the help of a friend, where he drew out his sword
for the last time and committed seppuku. At least that’s what the legend says. Historians consider
it more likely that he got badly injured and his followers decided to behead him.
The 40 remaining samurai led one last remaining charge against the imperial army,
knowing they were about to imminently die in battle as the last of their kind. After all
was said and done, Saigō was immortalized in Japanese history as “the real last samurai”.
Now you need to watch “The Truth About Why America
Dropped Atomic Bombs on Japan” Or, watch this video instead!