In Part 4 of this series, I quoted Sakamoto Ryōma’s assessment of Katsu Kaishū as “the greatest man in Japan.” The respect between the two men was clearly mutual. During the months after the two had first met, Kaishū mentioned Ryōma numerous times in his journal, including in an entry dated Bunkyu 3/5/16 (16^th day of the Fifth Month of the Japanese year corresponding to 1863), when Kaishū, then-vice-commissioner of warships, wrote that he would send Ryōma to Fukui, the feudal domain of his political ally and friend Matsudaira Shungaku, to solicit financial support for the private school in Kobe that Kaishū was about to establish for Ryōma and other “outlaw samurai” (rōnin) who had enlisted to study under him.

In all of these journal entries Kaishū refers to Ryōma, who was twelve years younger than him, as “Ryōma-shi.” The character for “shi” (子), which when pronounced “ko” means “child,” is in this sense used as an honorary, indicating that Kaishū perceived in Ryōma an element of greatness or at least extraordinary ability, as Matsuura Rei explains in his biography of Katsu Kaishū.

Three decades after Ryōma’s death, Kaishū had nothing but praise for him. In an interview with the national newspaper Yomiuri Shinbun, given on April 3, 1896, Kaishū said that Ryōma “had a cool head, and a certain power about him that was hard to penetrate. He was a good man.”

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The outlaw samurai Sakamoto Ryōma first met the shogun’s vice commissioner of warships, Katsu Kaishū, some time between the Tenth and Twelfth Months of the Japanese year corresponding to 1862. In light of Ryōma’s background as a leader of Takechi Hanpeita‘s seditious Tosa Loyalist Party, whose members had been assassinating officials and sympathizers of the shogun’s government over the past several months, it would not be unreasonable to assume that Ryōma had at least entertained the notion of killing Kaishū. “Sakamoto Ryōma came to kill me,” Kaishū recalled in 1896, more than thirty years later. But Kaishū tended to exaggerate and embellish past exploits; and anyway, based on Ryōma’s behavior during those bloody times (he is known to have killed only once, in self-defense), it is hard to believe that he intended to kill Kaishū.

Far from it. In fact, Ryōma became a devoted student of Katsu Kaishū, who in essence headed up the shogun’s nascent navy. Kaishū taught Ryōma the naval arts and sciences, most significantly how to operate and navigate a state-of-the-art steamship toward developing a modern Japanese navy. It was only natural, then, for Ryōma to be protective of his teacher. Which was why a few months after their first meeting, Ryōma recruited one of the most notorious assassins of the time, fellow Tosa samurai Okada Izō, who bore the nom de guerre “Hito-kiri” (literally, “Man-Cutter”), to protect Kaishū on the dangerous streets of Kyoto, the Imperial capital. Following is a slightly edited excerpt from my Samurai Revolution (without footnotes):

“The situation at that time was extremely dangerous,” Kaishū later wrote. “I had arrived [to the region] by ship, and come to Kyoto. It was a bad time to travel because all the inns [in the city] were completely full.” Okada Izō accompanied him that night, probably assigned to bodyguard duty by Ryōma. Kaishū and Izō were each armed with the two swords. As they walked down the street called Teramachi-dōri, running north and south just below the east side of the Imperial Palace, “three samurai suddenly appeared. Without uttering a word, they came at me with swords drawn. I was startled. Okada Izō of Tosa, walking beside me, drew his long sword and immediately jumped in and cut one of them in two. ‘Coward,’ Izō screamed. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ The other two, completely surprised, fled without looking back. I was amazed by his [Izō’s] technique and lightening speed.

But Kaishū was bothered by Izō’s attitude after the incident. “‘You shouldn’t take pleasure in killing people,’ I told him. ‘Bloodshed is extremely bad. You’d best mend your ways.’ He acknowledged my words, then faintly murmured, ‘If I hadn’t been with you the other day, Sensei, you would have lost your head.’ He stood there smiling. There wasn’t a thing I could say.”

Katsu Kaishū survived the assassination attempt, as he would numerous others, to move forward with a grand scheme to build a modern national navy, to which Sakamoto Ryōma was dedicated. During the first months of 1863, the political outlaw recruited men from Tosa, many from Takechi’s Tosa Loyalist Party, to join him under the leader of the enemy’s navy.

[Read Part 4 of this series here.]

Samurai Swordsmen: The Definitive History of the Shinsengumi (Helion, 2026) is now in production.
For professional guidance on Bakumatsu–Meiji Restoration history, see Historical Consulting.
Explore my books at Books at a Glance.

Sakamoto Ryōma became a political outlaw upon fleeing his native domain of Tosa on a rainy night in the spring of 1862, amid unprecedented social and political upheaval. Following is a slightly edited excerpt from my Samurai Revolution, Chapter 11 (without footnotes):

The crime of fleeing one’s han (i.e., feudal domain) was among the most serious in samurai society. It not only entailed forsaking one’s feudal lord and clan, but also abandoning one’s family—cardinal sins in a society based on Confucian morals. But Ryōma, an extremely independent sort, was unlike most men of his time. He was an iconoclast who would prove to be an enigma to many of his confederates in Tosa and other clans. Few if any of his fellow Imperial Loyalists, for all their avowed loyalty to the Emperor (and indeed readiness to die for their cause), had the audacity to throw off their loyalty to their han. But Ryōma did. In fleeing, it seems, he demonstrated his dissatisfaction with feudalism, including feudal lord and clan, and intended to break the feudal bonds forever.

His dissatisfaction had sprung from a gnawing resentment of the iniquities in feudal society (particularly Tosa), and more recently from his rejection of the violence perpetrated by his fellow Tosa Loyalists. While many of his friends were ready and willing to kill men of the Bakufu (i.e., Tokugawa Shogunate) and their supporters, Ryōma, an original member of the Tosa Loyalist Party, would ultimately turn peacemaker, bristling at unnecessary bloodshed even as he opposed the Bakufu to the bitter end. And while other “patriots of high aspiration” clamored to expel the barbarians and overthrow the Bakufu, they were jealous of the position of one another’s han in a post-Tokugawa Japan. Few, however, had a viable plan for the future. But Ryōma did—based on an uncanny foresight by which he saw beyond the boundaries of the feudal domains toward a unified Japanese nation. And it was another famous outsider, Katsu Kaishū, who would nurture that vision in Ryōma’s very supple mind. [end excerpt]

[Read Part 3 of this series here.]

It is well known that Katsu Kaishū and Sakamoto Ryōma had a very close relationship for a couple of years. But their relationship abruptly ended with the dismissal of Kaishū as the shogun’s commissioner of warships and his subsequent house arrest near the end of 1864, for harboring the likes of Ryōma and other known renegades intent on overthrowing the shogun’s government. And though the two men would never meet again, neither could have accomplished his greatest task without the other.

Kaishū taught Ryōma how to navigate a steamship, state-of-the-art technology that enabled him to establish and operate his merchant marine (Kaientai=Naval Auxiliary Corps), by which he ran guns for the revolution after his break with Kaishū. All of that was essential to Ryōma’s greater achievement of brokering an alliance between Satsuma and Chōshū against the shogunate in early 1866. Satsuma was led by Saigō Takamori, to whom Kaishū had introduced Ryōma just before his dismissal from the government – and it is doubtful that without his Kaishū connection Ryōma would have been in the position to even talk to Saigō. Without the Satsuma-Chōshū Alliance, of course, it is highly unlikely that the Meiji Restoration would have happened as and when it did – that is to say, it is doubtful that it would have been led by Satsuma and Chōshū between the end of 1867 and early 1868.

The shogunate was abolished and the Imperial government was established at the end of the Twelfth Month of the year Keiō 3 – January 3, 1868. Saigō represented the Imperial government in the talks with Kaishū to avert all-out civil war in Edo (modern-day Tokyo) in the spring of 1868. Kaishū, as commander of the military forces of the fallen shogun, agreed to surrender the shogun’s castle in Edo to avoid war. But he later remarked that had anyone but Saigō represented the Imperial government, “the talks would have broken down immediately.” Catastrophe would have followed, undoubtedly changing the course of history – and Katsu Kaishū would not have gone down in history as the man who saved the great city of Edo from the ravages of civil war.

[Read Part 2 of this series here.]

Samurai Swordsmen: The Definitive History of the Shinsengumi (Helion, 2026) is now in production.
For professional guidance on Bakumatsu–Meiji Restoration history, see Historical Consulting.
Explore my books at Books at a Glance.