Satsuma Rebellion

Although Satsuma had been one of the key players in the Meiji Restoration and the Boshin War, and although many men from Satsuma had risen to influential positions in the new Meiji government, there was growing dissatisfaction with the direction the country was taking. The modernization of the country meant the abolition of the privileged social status of the samurai class, and had undermined their financial position. The very rapid and massive changes to Japanese culture, language, dress and society appeared to many samurai to be a betrayal of the jōi ("expel the barbarian") portion of the sonnō jōi justification used to overthrow the former Tokugawa shogunate.[3]

Saigō Takamori, one of the senior Satsuma leaders in the Meiji government who had initially supported the reforms, was especially concerned about growing political corruption - popular prints depicted the rebel army with banners bearing the words shinsei-kōtoku (新政厚徳, new government, high morality). Saigō was a strong proponent of war with Korea in the Seikanron debate of 1873. At one point, he offered to visit Korea in person and to provide a casus belli by the likely outcome of his being assassinated by Korean nationalists. Saigō expected both that a war would ultimately be successful for Japan and also that the initial stages of it would offer a means by which the samurai whose cause he championed could find meaningful and beneficial death. When the plan was rejected, Saigō resigned from all of his government positions in protest and returned to his hometown of Kagoshima, as did many other Satsuma ex-samurai in the military and police forces.[3]

Imperial Japanese Army officers of the Kumamoto garrison, who resisted Saigō Takamori's siege, 1877

To help support and employ these men, in 1874 Saigō established a private academy known as the Shi-gakkō in Kagoshima. Soon 132 branches were established all over the prefecture. The “training” provided was not purely academic: although the Chinese classics were taught, all students were required to take part in weapons training and instruction in tactics. Saigō also started an artillery school. The schools resembled paramilitary political organizations more than anything else, and they enjoyed the support of the governor of Satsuma, who appointed disaffected samurai to political offices, where they came to dominate the Kagoshima government. Support for Saigō was so strong that Satsuma had effectively seceded from the central government by the end of 1876.[4]

Word of Saigō's academies was greeted with considerable concern in Tokyo. The government had just dealt with several small but violent samurai revolts in Kyūshū, and they found the prospect of rebellion by the numerous and fierce Satsuma samurai, led by the famous and popular Saigō, an alarming one. In December 1876, the Meiji government sent a police officer named Nakahara Hisao and 57 other men to investigate reports of subversive activities and unrest. The men were captured, and under torture, confessed that they were spies who had been sent to assassinate Saigō. Although Nakahara later repudiated the confession, it was widely believed in Satsuma and was used as justification by the disaffected samurai that a rebellion was necessary in order to "protect Saigō". Fearing a rebellion, the Meiji government sent a warship to Kagoshima to remove the weapons stockpiled at the Kagoshima arsenal on January 30, 1877. This, accompanied by an elimination of samurai rice stipends in 1877, provoked open conflict. Outraged by the government's tactics, 50 students from Saigō's academy attacked the Somuta Arsenal and carried off weapons. Over the next three days, more than 1000 students staged raids on the naval yards and other arsenals.[3]

Presented with this sudden success, the greatly dismayed Saigō was reluctantly persuaded to come out of his semi-retirement to lead the rebellion against the central government.

The clash at Kagoshima

In February 1877, the Meiji government dispatched Hayashi Tomoyuki, an official with the Home Ministry with Admiral Kawamura Sumiyoshi in the warship Takao to ascertain the situation. Satsuma's governor, Oyama Tsunayoshi, explained that the uprising was in response to the government's assassination attempt on Saigō, and asked that Admiral Kawamura (Saigō's cousin) come ashore to help calm the situation. After Oyama departed, a flotilla of small ships filled with armed men attempted to board Takao by force, but were repelled. The following day, Hayashi declared to Oyama that he could not permit Kawamura to go ashore when the situation was so unsettled, and that the attack on Takao constituted an act of lèse-majesté.

Imperial troops embarking at Yokohama to fight the Satsuma rebellion in 1877

On his return to Kobe on February 12, Hayashi met with General Yamagata Aritomo and Itō Hirobumi, and it was decided that the Imperial Japanese Army would need to be sent to Kagoshima to prevent the revolt from spreading to other areas of the country sympathetic to Saigō. On the same day, Saigō met with his lieutenants Kirino Toshiaki and Shinohara Kunimoto and announced his intention of marching to Tokyo to ask questions of the government. Rejecting large numbers of volunteers, he made no attempt to contact any of the other domains for support, and no troops were left at Kagoshima to secure his base against an attack. To aid in the air of legality, Saigō wore his army uniform. Marching north, his army was hampered by the deepest snowfall Satsuma had seen in more than 50 years, which, because of the similarity to the weather that had greeted those setting out to enact the Meiji Restoration nine years earlier, was interpreted by some as a sign of divine support.[3]

Soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army during the Satsuma Rebellion

Financially, crushing the Satsuma Rebellion cost the government a total of ¥420,000,000 (£8,400,000),[7] forcing Japan off the gold standard and causing the government to print paper currency. Economic effects of the Satsuma Rebellion resulted in the passing of the Act of February 4, 1877, which reduced the land tax from 3% to 2.5%. The Rebellion reduced Japan's yearly expenditure from £13,700,000 to £10,250,000, and it raised Japan's national debt from £28,000,000 to £70,000,000.[8] The costs of pacifying the former samurai led to the Meiji government becoming virtually bankrupt; the government was forced to sell off state-owned enterprises such as factories and mines to politically-connected merchants and former officials at low prices, leading to the instant formation of large industrial firms or zaibatsu. Meanwhile, the remnants of the militaristic faction that supported Saigo's invasion proposal evolved into Japanese right-wing groups such as the genyosha and kokuryūkai.[9] These state-owned industries had been operating at a loss, and Finance Minister Matsukata Masayoshi decided to sell all of these to politically connected capitalists at a loss, except the railroad, telegraph and military industries. He also cancelled scholarships for Japanese students abroad and fired foreign experts.[10]

The rebellion also effectively ended the samurai class, as the new Imperial Japanese Army built on heimin conscripts had proven itself in battle. More critically, the defeat of the samurai displayed the power of modern artillery and rifles, against which a banzai charge had no appreciable effect.[11] On 22 February 1889, Emperor Meiji pardoned Saigō posthumously.[12] Statues in Ueno Park, Tokyo and near the ruins of Kagoshima Castle stand in his memory. Saigō Takamori was labelled as a tragic hero by the people, and his actions were considered an honorable example of bushido and Yamato-damashii.

In English, the most common name for the war is the "Satsuma Rebellion". Mark Ravina, the author of The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori, argued that "Satsuma Rebellion" is not the best name for the war because the English name does not well represent the war and its Japanese name. Ravina said that the war's scope was much farther than Satsuma, and he characterizes the event as being closer to a civil war than a rebellion. Ravina prefers the English name "War of the Southwest."[13]

•  Japan portal

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• Beasley, William G. (1972). The Meiji Restoration. Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-8047-0815-0.
• Buck, James H. "The Satsuma Rebellion of 1877: From Kagoshima Through the Siege of Kumamoto Castle". Monumenta Nipponica 28#4 (1973), pp. 427–446. doi:10.2307/2383560. JSTOR 2383560.
• Craig, T. (1999). Remembering Aizu: The Testament of Shiba Goro. University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 0-8248-2157-2.
• Drea, Edward J. (2009). Japan's Imperial Army: Its Rise and Fall, 1853–1945. Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-8032-1708-9.
• Gordon, Andrew (2003). A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the Present. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-511061-7.
• Henshall, K. (2001). A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Superpower. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-23370-1.
• Jansen, Marius B. (2002). The Making of Modern Japan. Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-6740-0334-9.
• Keane, Donald (2005). Emperor Of Japan: Meiji And His World, 1852–1912. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0-231-12341-8.
• Perrin, Noel (1979). Giving up the gun. Boston: David R. Godine. ISBN 0-87923-773-2.
• Ravina, Mark (2004). The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigō Takamori. Wiley. ISBN 0-471-08970-2.
• Sims, Richard (2001). Japanese Political History Since the Meiji Renovation, 1868–2000. Palgrave. ISBN 0-312-23914-9.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Satsuma Rebellion.

• Satsuma Rebellion: Satsuma Clan Samurai Against the Imperial Japanese Army
• Organization of Imperial and Satsuma Forces