This week we’re discussing the second half of The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori by Mark Ravina. This is a biography of Saigo Takamori, who we met briefly in Beasly’s Meiji Restoration. Saigo is a legendary figure in modern Japanese history and was an early proponent of imperial as opposed to shogunate rule in Japan. However, as the Meiji Restoration’s direction pointed towards modernization of Japan rather than preservation of it’s traditions, Saigo became the last rebel of a dying world.
The second half takes us through Saigo’s ascendancy in domestic politics, the establishment of the Meiji government and to his rebellion against and death by the very state he helped to found. Saigo is a contradictory figure of principle and practicality - supporting the needs of a modern state that will maintain virtue and compete with the West while liquidating the traditional hierarchies of Japan. By the time Saigo realized that the needs of modernization won out on the ideals of samurai virtue, it was too late.
Mark Ravina is a professor of history at Emory College who specializes in eighteenth and nineteenth century Japanese history. He has written many articles for various journals as well as another book on modern Japan Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan. Ravina is currently working on a history of the Meiji Restoration called Japan’s Nineteenth Century Revolution: A Transnational History of the Meiji Restoration.
Next week we're reading the first half of Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail of '72.
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