The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigō Takamori (review)

It is difficult not to be swept away by "Saigō fever" after reading Mark Ravina's The Last Samurai. This is particularly true of the present reviewer, who made his first trip to Kagoshima this past year, visiting the Ishin Furusato Kan (Museum of the Meiji Restoration), where a robotic representation of Saigō occupied center stage and stole the dramatized show on late Tokugawa and early Meiji history. A brochure informs visitors that "the character of Satsuma's people can be learned through Saigō"—in other words, he represents all that is good in the people of what was once Tokugawa Japan's southernmost domain. Saigō was one of a number of seminal figures in Japan's transition from Tokugawa to Meiji, but today, his figure alone looms larger than life as a man who gained the respect and admiration of both disciples and political opponents alike. What also separates Saigō from his contemporaries is the fact that he was a legend in his own time—and, moreover, he was keenly aware of this. Ravina has ridden the wave of Saigō fever, inspired in part by the film "The Last Samurai," to produce a highly readable, engaging, and well-researched study of the man. In the end, though, those already familiar with the standard pieces of scholarship on Saigō in English will not find any surprises here.

Like many a kabuki drama, this book is circular in construction, beginning and ending in the same place—with the issue of Saigō's head. By the end of the narrative, the head has been restored to the body, so to speak, in two ways: First, we learn that Saigō's decapitated head, hidden by the man who had "assisted" in expediting his death when Saigō could not dispatch himself, was recovered by members of the Imperial Army and returned to a position in close proximity to his dismembered body. Second, the reader has come to understand some of the reasons the story of Saigō's end, including the hiding of his head, has taken on mythic proportions.

Regarding Saigō the man, as suggested by the book's subtitle, "The Life and Battles of Saigō Takamori," The Last Samurai provides much engaging detail about the existence of this samurai from Satsuma: his origins, family life, and education under the Satsuma gojū system, a largely self-regulating institution for social control and the schooling of samurai youth. Ravina reveals some of the fascinating aspects of this tradition, which included instruction on the biwa (Japanese lute), an instrument considered effeminate in many other parts of Japan; the custom of hiemontori, a competition among youth for the right to practice their swordsmanship on human cadavers; and an atmosphere involving homoerotic overtones. A serious injury to his right arm, suffered during a fight with another youth, helped lead Saigō to concentrate his energies more on the scholastic than the martial side of his education, and indeed he became a teacher held in high regard. This experience would also serve him well later, as he found great pleasure teaching local children during his often dark moments in exile. A tour of duty serving the domain lord on alternate attendance had a transformative influence on Saigō, as it did for many retainers, as it was in Edo that he discovered Mito learning and was able to meet like-minded samurai from other domains. As a result, the emperor entered his intellectual consciousness and "for the rest of his life Saigō would struggle to integrate his respect for Japanese tradition, his appreciation for Western society and technology, his loyalty to the Shimazu house, and his loyalty to the emperor" (p. 42). Saigō's political fortunes rose quickly through his close, personal ties to Shimazu Nariakira, but they fell with perhaps equal rapidity upon the lord's death, which resulted in Saigō's removal from the center of politics to the periphery—and in two periods...