Shinsaku Takasugi was a samurai from the Chōshū Domain of Japan who contributed significantly to the Meiji Restoration. He used several alias to hide his activities from the Tokugawa shogunate.
Background
Shinsaku Takasugi was born in the castle town Hagi, the capital of the Chōshū Domain (present-day Yamaguchi Prefecture) as the first son of Takasugi Kochuta, a middle-ranked samurai of the domain and his mother Michi. He would have three younger sisters by the name of Tomo (智), Sachi (幸) and Mei (明).
Education
Takasugi joined the Shoka Sonjuku, the famous private school of Yoshida Shōin. Takasugi devoted himself to the modernization of Chōshū's military, and became a favorite student of Yoshida.
In 1858, he entered the Shōheikō (a military school under direct control of the shōgun at Edo). In December 1859 he returned home by the clan's command.
However, in April 1861, Takasugi would left his home and undertook naval training on the clan's warship Heishinmaru, and travelled to Edo. Later in September he went to study at the Tōhoku region.
Career
Like most other imperial loyalists, Takasugi originally was strongly antiforeign, but he finally concluded that the expulsion of all Westerners from Japan was impossible, and he became an advocate of Western military techniques. His about-face almost resulted in his assassination, but he was vindicated in 1863, when attempts to expel foreigners from the Shimonoseki Strait resulted in the Shimonoseki Incident (1864)—the demolition of all Chōshū forts along the strait by warships from Britain, France, the Netherlands, and the United States. The loyalist faction in Chōshū then chose Takasugi to help construct a new Western-style army.
Takasugi’s reforms completely transformed Japanese fighting techniques. Although commoners were theoretically forbidden to carry weapons, he formed a series of peasant militia units led by young extremist samurai and trained in Western-style military discipline. The most famous of these units, the Kiheitai (“Irregular Troop Unit”), remained under Takasugi’s personal control.
Alarmed at the growing radical tendencies in Chōshū, the shogun in 1864 sent a punitive expedition to the fief. The Chōshū forces were defeated and a conservative government installed. As soon as the shogun’s army left, however, Takasugi’s irregular units attacked and defeated the conservative government’s forces and reinstalled a radical group in power. In August 1865 the shogun sent another expedition, this one with orders to level the fief. By this time, however, Takasugi had brought his militia units, equipped with Western arms, under strict central control; the shogun’s army was routed, and the balance of power in Japan was drastically altered. In January 1868, samurai from Chōshū and Satsuma fief overthrew the shogun and declared a new central government under the Meiji emperor.
One of the first acts of the new imperial government was to develop an army along the lines already begun by Takasugi, whose untimely death occurred before he could assume an important role in the new administration.
Personality
Physical Characteristics:
He had smallpox at the age of ten, but fortunately he had recovered from it.
Connections
In January 1860, Takasugi married Inoue Masa, the second daughter of Yamaguchi retainer and magistrate Inoue Heiemon who was also the friend of his father, Masa was said to be the most beautiful lady in Suō and Nagato provinces. Their marriage was arranged by his parents, with hope that he would take his mind off of his teacher's death in 1859 and to settle down with his new bride.