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Biography of Takamori SaigoName: Takamori SaigoBirth Date: February 7, 1827 Death Date: September 24, 1877 Place of Birth: Kagoshima, Satsuma, Japan Nationality: Japanese Gender: Male Occupations: politician, military leader Takamori Saigo The Japanese rebel and statesman Takamori Saigo (1827-1877) was the military leader of the Meiji restoration. His eventual revolt against the Meiji government in 1877 represented the resistance of the old warrior class to the swift and often ruthless policy of Westernization of Japan.Takamori Saigo was born the eldest son of a lower-ranking samurai family on Feb. 7, 1827, in Kagoshima, the castle town of the Satsuma domain. As a youth, he showed much interest in both Wang Yang-ming Confucianism and Zen Buddhism, both of which stressed the importance of acting on individual conscience. After briefly attending the domain academy, he became a minor domain official. A huge man, physically powerful with a dark penetrating gaze and a commanding presence, he attracted the attention of the lord of the domain, Nariakira Shimazu, who agreed with his views that major domestic reforms were necessary to meet the challenge of the West. He acted as …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…Saigo seems to have remained politically inactive and even resisted pressure by discontented elements in other domains to revolt. But in 1877, when an army of former Satsuma samurai rebelled against the central government's attempts to end Satsuma's semiautonomous administrative status, he agreed to lead them. On Sept. 24, 1877, he took his life in traditional samurai fashion during the final battle with government troops, which ended the rebellion. Further Reading One biography of Saigo in English is a translation of a work by a well-known novelist, Saneatsu Mushakoji, Great Saigo: The Life of Takamori Saigo (1942), which is romanticized and eulogistic. The story of Saigo's involvement in the rebellion of 1877 is treated in a contemporary journalistic account by Augustus H. Mounsey, The Satsuma Rebellion: An Episode of Modern Japanese History (1879).Yates, Charles L., Saigo Takamori: the man behind the myth, London; New York: Kegan Paul International; New York: Distributed by Columbia University Press, 1995. |