Background
Tsugumichi Saigo was born on 1 June 1843 in the domain of Satsuma, the younger brother of the famous statesman and military leader Saigo Takamori.
Tsugumichi Saigo was born on 1 June 1843 in the domain of Satsuma, the younger brother of the famous statesman and military leader Saigo Takamori.
He took part in the Boshin civil war and, on its conclusion in 1869, was dispatched by the government along with Yamagata Aritomo to visit Russia, Germany, and France to study military matters. On his return to Japan in 1870, he was appointed acting chief clerk of military affairs. In 1872 he became a major general in the army and in 1874 advanced to the rank of lieutenant general. In 1874, he prepared to head an expedition to Taiwan to punish the aborigines for an earlier mistreatment of a party of shipwrecked Japanese. Though the government later decided to cancel the expedition, Saigo proceeded to carry it out anyway, bearing the title of governor general of Taiwan aborigine affairs. In 1877, when his brother Takamori headed the revolt against the government known as the Seinan War, he served as commander of the Imperial Guards, proclaiming his loyalty to the emperor and refusing to join his brother’s forces.
From 1878 on, he served as councilor of state and minister of education, minister of war, and minister of agriculture and commerce. After a journey to Europe, he transferred from the army to the navy, serving as the first minister of the navy in the ltd Hirobumi cabinet formed in 1885. He continued to serve in this position for the following ten years or more, until the fall of the third ltd cabinet in 1898, except for brief intervals when he served as home minister in the first Matsukata Masayoshi cabinet and temporarily as war minister in the second ltd cabinet. During this period, in 1891, occurred the so-called Otsu Incident, when a Japanese police officer attacked the Russian Crown Prince Nikolai, who was visiting Japan, at the town of Otsu. Saigo, fearing that the event would lead to international complications, assumed full responsibility for what had happened.
In 1898 he became home minister in the Yamagata cabinet and was promoted to the rank of fleet admiral.
In 1892 he joined with Shinagawa Yajiro in forming a conservative political party known as the Kokumin Kyokai.