Meiji Restoration Losers: Memory and Tokugawa Supporters in Modern Japan by Michael Wert (review)

Meiji Restoration Losers presents a thoughtful analysis of the Meiji Restoration by means of an alternative narrative—one that focuses on men who were ultimately on the losing side of that struggle. Author Michael Wert’s theoretical basis is informed by Pierre Nora’s influential concept “‘sites of memory’ (lieux de mémoire)” (p. 4). At the same time, however, Wert acknowledges that other scholars have “appropriated the concept” in various ways—among them Takashi Fujitani, who has analyzed the role of sites of memory in the development of the Japanese nation-state (p. 5). Throughout the book, he examines the discourse that has taken place between local and national entities including village committees, prefectural leaders, local citizens groups, and even diggers for Tokugawa gold. He traces the events that have led, for example, to the building of monuments honoring Tokugawa officials who had long been considered enemies of the state or to the production of an NHK drama about Meiji victims, and he succeeds in showing that over time the process of constructing important sites of memory has transformed memory landscapes. Based on a wide range of sources, from Japanese historiography to actual sites of memory and interviews with community members, the book looks at the dominant narrative embodied in the Meiji-era proverb kateba kangun, makereba zokugun (“‘might makes right,’ or ‘victor’s justice,’” p. 1), which defined those who fought on the side of the Tokugawa shogunate as losers and as traitors, or enemies of the court (chōteki).

Wert focuses his analysis chiefly on the process of memory construction in the cases of two individuals, Oguri Tadamasa (1827–1868) and Ii Naosuke (1815–1860) and one locale, Aizu domain. Oguri is notable for having been the only top bakufu official to have been executed during the Boshin War without a trial. He had been involved with the construction of the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal and with mediating French assistance to the Tokugawa government reform. Imperial troops arrested him in Gonda village (Gunma prefecture), where he had retired after being dismissed from the government, mainly for having insisted that the shogunate should resist rather than follow through with its decision to compromise with imperial forces. The imperial victors vilified him, claiming that he was organizing a rebellion, and subjected him to the humiliation of being beheaded rather than allowed to commit ritual suicide, as would have been the norm for someone of his status under such circumstances. Wert traces step by step the way in which Oguri and his fate were appropriated into the Meiji modernization narrative; his summary execution was treated as a painful memory, and he was eventually credited for his roles in the construction of the Yokosuka Naval Arsenal and the mediation of French assistance to Tokugawa government reform. Wert also shows how in the last two decades of the twentieth century interest in Oguri resurfaced as part of the Japanese search for alternative explanations for economic stagnation.

Wert compares the fate of Oguri with that of Ii Naosuke, the bakufu Great Councilor (tairō) who was assassinated in 1860 for having decided in 1858 to conclude commercial treaties with Western powers without imperial approval. So shocking was Ii’s action that the Tokugawa government—already in disarray following Commodore Perry’s opening of Japan in 1854—at first suppressed news of the treaty. Ii was killed at Sakuradamon on March 24, 1860, by a group of eighteen samurai, seventeen from Mito and one from Satsuma. His decision was reinterpreted during the Meiji period such that he was acknowledged for having pragmatically bought time in order to avoid war for the good of the country.

As Ii’s case demonstrates, the Tokugawa-Meiji transition was a tumultuous one, marked by assassinations of bakufu officials who were blamed for selling out the country amid a fierce power struggle between opposing factions. The Tokugawa became increasingly draconian in their efforts...