Saigo Takamori
Saigō Takamori was a Japanese samurai and statesman who did more than almost anyone to bring about the Meiji Restoration, and then died leading a rebellion against the government he had built. Born in Satsuma in 1828 into a low-ranking samurai family, he entered the service of the domain's reforming lord Shimazu Nariakira, who used him as a political agent in Edo. When Nariakira died in 1858 Saigō's position collapsed and he was twice exiled to remote islands, on the second occasion in a small cell. Recalled in 1864, he commanded Satsuma forces and negotiated the Satchō Alliance of 1866 with Chōshū — the secret pact between two rival domains that made the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate possible. He led the imperial army in the Boshin War of 1868-69 and negotiated the bloodless surrender of Edo Castle with Katsu Kaishū, sparing the city. He became a senior figure in the new government and, in the years that followed, presided over the abolition of the domains and of the samurai class itself: stipends were commuted, sword-carrying was banned, and a conscript army replaced hereditary warriors. He resigned in 1873 after losing an argument over Seikanron, a proposed punitive expedition to Korea — he had offered to go as an envoy and provoke his own killing to justify war. He returned to Satsuma and founded private academies for disgruntled former samurai. In 1877 those men rose in the Satsuma Rebellion, and Saigō, apparently reluctantly, led them. The conscript army he had helped create defeated them. He died at Shiroyama in September 1877, by seppuku or by wounds. He was pardoned posthumously in 1889 and is remembered as the last samurai.
- Lived: 1828 CE – 1877 CE
- Nationality: Japanese
- Roles: samurai, statesman
