Just as “a house in strife will fall, a country in strife will fall.” Katsu Kaishū

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Abraham Lincoln

The peaceful surrender of the fallen shogun’s castle at Edo (modern-day Tokyo), negotiated in the spring of 1868, one day before a scheduled general attack on the capital by forces of the new Imperial government, is “the most beautiful event in Japanese history,” according to Saigō Takamori’s biographer Kaionji Chōgorō. It was a result of amicable talks between the military leaders of the opposing sides: Katsu Kaishū representing the shogun, and Saigō, the de facto commander of the Imperial forces. Kaionji’s perceived “beauty” lay in the fact that a devastating civil war was thereby averted, sparing Edo’s population of well over a million from untold misery.

But even after the castle was surrendered, thousands of samurai in Edo refused to yield to draconian treatment by the Imperial government, including confiscation of their landholdings, which would leave them without a livelihood. With a final military showdown imminent, Kaishū sent a letter to Saigō warning him of the dire consequences of the unfair treatment. “Where do you expect them to vent their enmity?” But if the government would treat his people fairly, Kaishū assured Saigō, “the people would happily submit.” But, he ominously warned, just as “a house in strife will fall, a country in strife will fall”–and though Kaishū certainly admired Abraham Lincoln, it is unknown whether or not he was mindful of his famous dictum of a “house divided” uttered a decade earlier.

(Katsu Kaishū is the “shogun’s last samurai” of my Samurai Revolution. The image of Saigō and Kaishū negotiating the surrender of Edo Castle is used in my Samurai Tales, courtesy of Seitoku Kinen Kaigakan.)

In 1878, ten years after the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate, Katsu Kaishū published a short, poignant narrative of tumultuous events that occurred between the fall of 1856 and around mid-1868. These events, in which Kaishū was either directly involved or witnessed directly or indirectly, informed modern Japanese history, and therefore influenced Asian and world history. The narrative is entitled Danchonoki (断腸之記) which I translate as “Heartrending Narrative.”

Katsu Kaishū, “the shogun’s last samurai” of my book Samurai Revolution, was a keen observer of human behavior. He had a deep understanding of human nature and, I think, the human condition. He was a prolific and penetrating writer, for which I am very grateful. One of my favorite quotes from his writing is the last line of the Epilogue of “Heartrending Narrative”:

“An old saying has it that one should not tell his dreams to an idiot. I reverse that to say: Only an idiot tells his dreams.”

(This photo of Katsu Kaishū was taken in 1860 during his stay in San Francisco. He sent a copy to his mistress in Nagasaki, Kaji Kuma, who was living with their son, Umetarō. It is used (without the frame) in Samurai Revolution, courtesy of Keisho Ishiguro.

Last week I wrote a little about Katsu Kaishu’s father, Katsu Kokichi. According to Kokichi’s autobiography, he studied sword-cutting techniques under Yamada Asaemon VII—also aptly known as “Asaemon the Beheader” (“Kubikiri Asaemon”). Eight consecutive generations of the Yamada family, each bearing the given name Asaemon, performed executions for the Tokugawa Shogunate. They were not retainers of the shogun, but rather possessed the indecorous position of unofficial executioner at Edo. The official executioner was a retainer of the shogun, who presumably preferred not to perform the hideous job. So the government hired the Yamada family to do it. Occasionally Yamada was called upon to perform a cutting test after an execution. When his clients obtained a new sword, they needed to confirm that it was sharp enough to cut through the tough sinews and hard bone of the human body. The corpses of executed criminals were used. Kokichi must have been a fast learner. “One day I performed a cutting test,” he wrote. “I cut through the torso. Since my son was at the palace [at Edo Castle], I didn’t have to take care of him.”

On a grimmer note, Yoshida Shoin, the great revolutionary hero of Choshu, was beheaded by Yamada Asaemon VII, under Regent Ii Naosuke’s crackdown against his enemies.

[I have written about Yamada Asaemon and cutting tests in Samurai Tales (Tuttle, 2010), and about Yoshida Shoin in Samurai Revolution (Tuttle, 2014). This photo of Yamada Asaemon VIII, taken in 1903, is used in Samurai Tales courtesy of Yuzankaku Publishing Co.]

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