“. . . we are going to have to learn more than just the arts of war.”

The United Nations states on its website: “The development of International Law is one of the primary goals of the United Nations.” Sakamoto Ryoma, the “Renaissance Samurai” of my historical novel Ryoma, also had a high regard for international law. Ryoma of course never left Japan and his progressiveness is all the more remarkable when you consider that he lived his entire short life in a highly structured, repressive feudal society under the Tokugawa Shogunate, which ruled the country under a policy of isolationism from the outside world for over two centuries.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan announced his intention to remain in his post until 2018, the 150^th anniversary of the Meiji Restoration, the “dawn of modern Japan.” He made the announcement on August 12, at Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture, formerly named Choshu during the pre-Restoration samurai era. Abe’s forebears were from Choshu, which played a leading role in the overthrow the Tokugawa Shogunate and the restoration of Imperial rule – a significant point I have made in previous blog postings including “Samurai Lineage Underlies Japanese Premier’s Drive to Strengthen Military.” The Restoration heroes from Choshu are among the most revered men in Japanese history. There can be little doubt that Abe’s Choshu samurai lineage is connected to his intention to rebuild Japan into a military power. “I’m quietly resolved to make decent achievements as a prime minister from Yamaguchi Prefecture, home to key figures in the Meiji Restoration,” he is quoted in The Japan Times on August 13, 2015.

(I wrote extensively about Choshu and Satsuma, the other leading samurai clan of the Meiji Restoration, in Samurai Revolution.)

For updates about new content, connect with me on Facebook.

Katsu Kaishū gave an interview to the Kokumin Shinbun which appeared in that newspaper’s September 21, 1898 issue, just months before his death in the following January. In the interview Kaishū imparted a moral lesson he had learned from “a holy man,” who had lived “long ago.” Since I didn’t include Kaishū’s moral lesson in Samurai Revolution, I present it here:

The holy man’s “prayers worked well in the lottery, which was popular back then—and for that reason he had a very good reputation,” Kaishū said. “Since my father was friendly with him, I visited him sometimes.” But eventually strict government controls were placed on the lottery and the holy man “was reduced to poverty. . . . But that holy man was quite a fellow. Not only did he eat meat and have a wife of his own, but he had no qualms about being with someone else’s wife. . . . Having wound up in such reduced circumstances, however, he grew weak in body and spirit. One day when I visited him, I brought a little something with me. He looked at me and said, ‘You’re still young, but perseverant and reliable. So I’m going to tell you a little story.’”

According to the holy man’s story, there were two other reasons that his prayers for the lottery stopped working. One had to do with a beautiful young woman who “came to ask for my prayers in the lottery. But since she was so beautiful I couldn’t help but desire her. I seduced her then gave her my prayers.” The prayers worked; the woman won the lottery. A few days later she returned to the holy man’s home to thank him. “I tried to seduce her again. But she only stared at me with frightening eyes,” saying that the only reason she had been unfaithful to her husband was so that he would get the lottery money. “Her eyes and the hissing in her voice pierced me to the quick.”

The other reason that the man’s prayers no longer worked had to do with a large snapping turtle he had bought because “I needed something nutritious to eat.’” But “’when I went to cook it, the damn turtle lifted up its head and stared right at me with its big eyeballs. I said, ‘What’s this?’ Then I cut off its head, cooked it, and ate it. But somehow I was bothered.” And because he felt guilty about those two incidents, his “prayers gradually stopped working.”

Katsube Mitake, in his biography of Katsu Kaishū, attaches a Buddhistic moral to the story: Never do evil. Always do good. When Kaishū “heard this story, its truth burst upon me like a sudden flash. And to this day I have not forgotten it. The reason that even at my present age [seventy-five] I am still mentally and physically sound is because its power remains with me at all times—and looking back upon my own personal experiences I don’t remember ever having mistaken the way that a human being should live.”

[Photo: Katsu Kaishū in the garden of his Hikawa estate in Tokyo, photographed late in his life.]

Sources
Hikawa Seiwa (Katsu Kaishū Zenshū 21) Tōkyō: Kodansha, 1973 (pp. 296–97)
Katsube Mitake. Katsu Kaishū. Vol. 1. Tokyo: PHP, 1992 (p. 348)

Katsu Kaishū is the “shogun’s last samurai” of Samurai Revolution, the only biography in English.