Yoshida Shoin and his love for his sister: Letters from jail and the memoirs of his sister Great Japanese Thinker Series (Japanese Edition) eBook: Yoshida Shoin, Kodama Chiyoko, Matsumiya Tanbo, Bakumatsu Meiji Kenkyukai, Dainippon Shiso Zenshu Kankokai: Books
Yoshida Shoin was one of the more brilliant political thinkers that Japanese society has ever produced. His brilliance, however, was in sharp contrast to the shabby circumstances in which Tokugawa society obliged him to live. Shoin’s whole existence, from his earliest years, was submerged, involuntarily, in an intense discipline, all for the sake of lord and domain, and peculiar set of priorities to Bakuhan society.
Background
Yoshida Shoin was born in 1830 in Matsumoto, a small village close to the castle town of Hagi, Choshu Domain (modern-day Yamaguchi prefecture). He was the second son of a lower ranking samurai named Sugi Yurinosuke and was adopted by his uncle Yoshida Daisuke at the age of four. Yoshida Shoin was also known by the first names Toranosuke, Torajirō, Daijirōand Matsujirō, while his samurai name was Norikata.
The process of adopting younger sons from the Sugi house was established generations before Shoin’s birth. The Sugi family controlled two additional samurai lineages - the Tamaki and the Yoshida lineages to avoid the financial problem. The oldest male became the Sugi heir and the younger Sugi sons were adopted by the Tamaki and Yoshida lines as their heirs to ensure the Sugi succession was protected this required the head of the house in the Yoshida line and most generations the Tamaki line to remain unmarried. Daisuke who at the time had problems with his health died at the age of 28, leaving Yoshida Shoin as the heir of the Yoshida lineage at five years of age.
Education
His family was the instructor to the daimyo in military studies, but due to Shoin’s young age, four men were appointed to represent the Yoshida family as instructors. Shoin’s younger uncle, Tamaki, set about accelerating Shoin’s education to prepare the boy for his eventual duties as Yamaga instructor. This period of the intense study suggests a formative experience that shaped Shoin into an educator and activist that helped spur the Meiji Restoration.
When Yoshida was ten, he went up to the castle with the others and delivered a lecture to Takachika on the Bukyozensho, Yamaga Soko’s collection of essays on military strategy. Taken aback by the young boy’s unexpected skill, Takachika, then only twenty-one himself, asked Yoshida who had educated him. Yoshida replied that Tamaki Bunnoshin had.
During Yoshida’s teens, his education continued under his han-appointed supervisors and such other teachers as the Meirinkan environment had to offer. In addition to the Chinese classics, he acquired a smattering of horsemanship, traditional gunnery and Western bivouac techniques. Through his supervisor Yamada Uemon he is said to have gained his first knowledge of the Western presenc in Asia.
Yoshida lived partly with the Sugi family and some of his tutors and continued his military studies until 1846 when he graduated with a diploma in the Nagamuna style of military science. He was instructed in gunnery. Word about his expertise on military tactics and European warfare reached the Mōri damiyō, who came to visit his annual series of lectures and admired the maps drawn by him and his disciples.
In 1851, at the age of twenty-one, Shoin accompanied his lord to Edo, where he studied under Sakuma Shōzan, the most celebrated Western military scientist in Japan. During this period Yoshida sometimes went to visit Sakuma Shozan to study gunnery in his private school in Edo only the year before. Yoshida would go on and say how impressed he was with Sakuma.
Career
After his graduation in 1848, he took up a position as teacher at the meirinkan and published a series of books on his journeys as well as on military matters and administration. The school’s buildings were scheduled for a complete renovation in 1849, and Shoin was probably consulted on this occasion, along with the other instructors.
When Shoin was living under house arrest with the Sugi family, he was teaching at a small annex to the main building. In the summer of 1857, Shoin became a teacher at shokasonjuku, the school of his uncle Tamaki. In the beginning, there were only three students, but that number soon increased to 25. Many candidates had to be refused due to lack of space. Yoshida was very meticulous in selecting his disciples, and when he refused a student, it was final. On the other hand, he was willing to sacrifice for his students, being at their academic disposal day and night. Yoshida did not accept tuition, just donations in food. He could live on the stipend he received from the daimyo. In 1858, the daimyo admitted him to teach military sciences at the Yamagaryu. Yoshida remained curious about the West throughout his short life.
During his trip, Yoshida’s journal shows that he had a keen and tireless interest in the conduct of public affairs. His methodical notations were the work, not of a romantic who ignored political reality, but rather of a man who walked the length of the country to observe firsthand the diversity of political realities that the realm had to offer.
His time in the prison, Yoshida suggested several fairly drastic innovations, including moving the Bakufu government to Kyoto and establishing there a new national academy to teach western languages and technology.
No sooner had Shoin heard the news of Ii’s "blasphemy," than he made a complete turnabout in his political stance, and became the most radical of zealots who preached Imperial Reverence and Expelling the Barbarians. He would now 'correct' the lese majesty committed by the evil regent. He would take part in a plot among radicals from other clans to assassinate him, but first, in November 1858, he planned to assassinate a Tokugawa councilor whom Ii had unsuccessfully sent to Kyoto to obtain Imperial sanction for the commercial treaty.
Views
Yoshida Shoin was an avid scholar who denied himself sleep, and who was known to stand or walk in the snow to keep himself awake for his studies. At age five Shoin began the formal study of military tactics and the Chinese classics. By age eight he was studying the Confucian philosophy of Meng-tzu, and began attending the official college of the Choshudomain. In the following year he taught at the college. At age ten he won praise from the Lord of Choshu for his recital of the military classics. At fifteen he became awakened to the dangerous goings on in the world outside the sacred Empire of Yamato. In 1848, five years before the arrival of Perry, he advised the Lord of Choshu to prepare for foreign invasion. In 1851, his twenty-first year, Shoin accompanied the Lord of Choshu to the Shogun’s capital at Edo, where he studied under Sakuma Shozan, the most celebrated Western military scientist in Japan.
Shoin was in Edo when Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States Navy arrived in June 1853. Perry led a squadron of heavily armed warships into the bay off the Shogun’s capital, demanding an end of Japanese isolation and inciting fifteen years of bloody turmoil throughout the island nation. Shoin learned from Shozan the futility of challenging the modern military power of the West with Japan’s ancient arts of war. He adopted his teacher’s belief in the aphorism "Know the enemy" in order to "control the barbarians through barbarian technology." But the Tokugawa Shogunate did not have the wherewithal to reject Perry’s demands. Rather than remain idle while bumbling Tokugawa officials sealed the fate of the Japanese nation, Shoin, with the help of his revered teacher, planned drastic measures.
Perry concluded Japan’s first treaty with the United States in March 1854. Shortly after, his squadron lay in the harbor at Shimoda, one of two ports opened under the terms of the treaty, from which it would soon depart.
Shoin prepared a letter for Perry, which he and a fellow Choshu samurai delivered to American officers on land, under the cover of night. Perry described the incident: [They] "were observed to be men of some position and rank, as each wore the two swords characteristic of distinction, and were dressed in the wide but short trowsers of rich silk brocade. Their manner showed the usual courtly refinement of the better classes, but they exhibited the embarrassment of men who evidently were not perfectly at their ease, and were about doing something of dubious propriety. They cast their eyes stealthily about as if to assure themselves that none of their countrymen were at hand to observe their proceedings, and then approaching one of the officers and pretending to admire his watch-chain, slipped within the breast of his coat a folded paper."
The "folded paper," written in "the mandarin Chinese with fluency and apparent elegance," and translated by Perry’s interpreter, was as moving in its humble tone as it was compelling. "Two scholars from Yedo, in Japan, present this letter for the inspection of "the high officers and those who manage affairs." Our attainments are few and trifling, as we ourselves are small and unimportant, so that we are abashed in coming before you; we are neither skilled in the use of arms, nor are we able to discourse upon the rules of strategy and military discipline... we have been for many years desirous of going over the "five great continents," but the laws of our country in all maritime points are very strict; for foreigners to come into the country, and for natives to go abroad, are both immutably forbidden.
Personality
His passion for study was so intense, that he even begrudged himself natural repose; and when he grew drowsy over his books, he would, if it was summer, put mosquitoes up his sleeve; and if it was winter, take off his shoes and run barefoot in the snow.
Physical Characteristics:
“He was ugly,” Stevenson records, “and laughably disfigured with the smallpox; and while nature had been so niggardly with him from the first, his personal habits were still more sluttish. His clothes were wretched; when he ate or washed he wiped his hands upon his sleeves, and as his hair was not tied more than once in two months, it was often disgusting to behold.”
Yoshida Shoin was physically frail, soft-spoken and a master of self-control whose willpower knew no bounds.
Quotes from others about the person
"He knew nothing of anger," a former student would recall. "He was kind to others... and had a polite manner of speech", said a former student.
Interests
public affairs
Connections
His father Sugi Yurinosuke was a modest rank samurai. He had two brothers who were also samurai's. However it was Daisuke Yoshida who adopted him at the age of 4 who had two lineage of samurai links Tanaki and Yoshida lineages.
Father:
Sugi Yurinosuke
Brother:
Yoshida Daisuke
Brother:
Tamaki Bunnoshin
foster father:
Daisuke Yoshida
References
The Revolutionary Origins of Modern Japan by Thomas M Huber
Challenging the popular view of the Meiji Restoration as a "revolution from above," this book argues that its main cause was neither the growing threat of the West nor traditional loyalty to Emperor and nation, but rather lay in class conflict and long-term institutional change.