和の変容 2：多極化世界の和Transforming Wa, Part 2: Wa in a Multipolar World

Wa [和] does not equal mass conformity. I position Wa as the invisible action and working that generates mass conformity. These two easily confused domains must be clearly distinguished in thought. What Wa requires to generate mass conformity is not the government, society, or any specific leader or group. Wa transforms by its own will, and we continuously suffer the influence of that transformation. It is therefore impossible for human beings to intentionally correct or modify Wa. This recognition is the foundation for understanding Wa as the invisible force that generates mass conformity.

Building on this premise, I will begin the continuation of the Transformation of Wa released last week. The original plan has changed, and the history from the Meiji Restoration through the modern and contemporary periods that I had intended to discuss in this Part 2 of 3 will be split into broader sections. What I will cover this time is the period from the late Edo era called Bakumatsu leading up to the Meiji Restoration through the success of the Restoration itself. Since I will proceed on the premise of the content in Part 1 of 3, please read Part 1 first if you have not done so.

The era I focus on in the transformation history of Wa is the period around the Meiji Restoration of 1868. The direct cause of the structural turning point born in this era can be read through the perspective of the transformation of Wa. The theme this time is the movement in which Wa began a great variation aimed at unification.

This era ended the three hundred years of the Tokugawa shogunal house's Edo shogunate and has been beautified as the structural turning point of modern Japan that led to the establishment of a new government backed by the Western powers. Yet the people who carried out the Meiji Restoration did not share a single thought or purpose. They were in essence a miscellaneous armed group brought together by the drift of the era. In this respect they differ greatly from the unity of the later Imperial Japanese military. The form of Wa in the two eras is entirely different. In modern history this context has been considerably beautified, and the Meiji Restoration is defined as having been consistent under the cause of "Sonno Joi" [尊王攘夷] (revere the emperor and expel the foreigner). The substance was "overthrow the shogunate," and not many people genuinely believed in this kind of grand cause.

The great majority participated for practical reasons such as earning money, seeking position and honor, or selling their names to gain employment with some domain. People like this are always opportunists who swing right or left according to the conditions of the era. For the portion of people who advocated overthrowing the shogunate, the problem became how to bring these opportunists to their side even temporarily, execute the revolution, and govern them afterward. The era just before the Meiji Restoration is called Bakumatsu [幕末] in the sense of the late Edo shogunate. The principal forces that carried out the Meiji Restoration and built the Meiji government from Bakumatsu were Choshu Domain (present-day Yamaguchi Prefecture) and Satsuma Domain (present-day Kagoshima Prefecture).

The Edo period in its broad flow can be thought of in three dimensions. These are the shogunate in Edo, the imperial court in Kyoto, and the domains in each region. What is easily misunderstood is that no "unified Wa" existed across the three hundred years of the Edo period. A monolithic conception like "Japanese Wa" or "the Wa of the Japanese people" did not exist in the Edo period. It is a "new way of thinking" formed in the history after the Meiji period. My own view is that the Edo period was the form on the Japanese archipelago of what is now called a multipolar world in geopolitical terms.

The upheaval of the Meiji Restoration is often simplified, but Choshu and Satsuma were not necessarily the sole driving force. The essential point occurring in this turbulent era comes down to one thing. How would Japan resist the external Western forces that were trying to occupy it? In the process of declining centripetal force toward the shogunate, when the imminent crisis of occupation by the West was at hand and unless the shogunate, the domains, and the court joined together, Wa varied first toward a state of unification. This variation over years became transformation and was eventually reflected in the era as history.

The people who lamented Japan's future at the time threw themselves into a new problem. How could they shape Japan as one when no consistent force was acting upon it? This is the critical point. As we decipher this, it becomes a problem of how to unify the countless dispersed forces of Wa into one and to exclude the West that was trying to intervene in that unified Wa. The movement here was not the integration of multiple Wa as in a multipolar world but an attempt to drive back the West through the force of unification. From this a new perspective of "one force" was born.

If Wa is to become one force, the problem becomes "who" holds the initiative. The Tokugawa shogunal house and the shogunate no longer had that power, and the emperor did not have that level of power either. Everyone at the time was aware of this. The problem then shifted to "which domain" would hold the initiative. This is one of the truths of the Meiji Restoration as a contest over hegemony.

Let me explain why this distinctively Japanese perspective was born. The leading figures of the Meiji Restoration were samurai who carried the practice of the martial arts (Japanese Budo). In Japanese Budo, victory and defeat are decided by whether one can unify the scattered Ki within oneself. Combat ability has nothing to do with victory. This principle had soaked into the samurai throughout the Edo period, and the teaching of Confucianism as the regime philosophy of the shogunate since Tokugawa Ieyasu had been carried through the warrior class. The important transformation that occurred among the samurai in the Bakumatsu period was that they took the unified state of the warrior's body and spirit as a model for the healthy form of "the nation" and interpreted it independently. They acted toward the realization of that ideal nation. The intent to form a nation in resistance to the West was born here and transcended the previous dimension of each samurai's way of life. The samurai-specific techniques of Budo and Confucianism intervened in the flow of nation formation.

The problem is that this thinking was specific to the samurai class in the Edo period and unrelated to people of other classes. However, in the swirl of the militarism of Imperial Japan this samurai-specific technique appeared in the form of coercion of the populace. A strange phenomenon occurred. Although the samurai status had been only a small portion throughout the Edo period, in the Imperial Japanese era every member of the populace was transmuted into the samurai class. This can be read as the influence of the intervention of Bushido (The way of samurai) into Wa during the Bakumatsu period.

What they treated as a special problem was the complete split between the shogunate that held up the shogun and the court that held up the emperor that left the force of Japan ununified. To form a nation with one force, the unification of shogunate and court was the basic premise. The conception that holds the key is the idea of "Kobu Gattai" [公武合体] (union of court and shogunate) particularly asserted in the Bakumatsu period. Kobu Gattai was the very attempt to fuse the court and the shogunate and forcibly produce a single force. This Kobu Gattai is hidden within this article's theme.

To put it clearly, unless Kobu Gattai as a single force could be realized, it was visibly certain that Japan would become a Western colony. The idea of “Saisei Itchi" [祭政一致] (unity of ritual and government) advocated by Aizawa Seishisai of the Late Mito School in 1825 was typical. For the people of Bakumatsu these had become hollow slogans and were interpreted only as a problem of where sovereignty over the force would belong. The split was between realizing a "unified state" in the form of updating the shogunate and realizing a "unified state" under a new regime that overthrew the shogunate. These were not cleanly bifurcated, and both flowed together into the Meiji Restoration. Wa began to transform toward the unification of Japan's national territory, and the movement of Wa containing this force aimed at unification was further altered by the provocative acts of the West in the waters around Japan.

Let us read the movement of Wa that gave birth to modern Japan. The first point to recognize is that at the time of the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the cutting-edge thinkers of the Late Mito School had all died. Meanwhile, the sweeping domain governance reform carried out in Mito Domain in 1829 had formed a new current of the era. The thought nurtured in the Mito school had at last begun to transfer to practical action. The leader of that reform was Tokugawa Nariaki, the ninth domain lord. While carrying out major reform as the lord of Mito Domain, he shifted to a policy of giving opportunity to the lower and middle samurai who had been ignored until then if they had ability. This reform by the domain lord was welcomed by the young samurai. Filled with vigor, they responded to expectations with action and swore loyalty to their lord as reformists. They drew strong opposition from the conservative faction within the domain who valued the old samurai status order. The Mito conservatives used the word “tengu ni natteiru" (becoming a long-nosed tengu) to despise the reformists, a Japanese expression meaning "getting carried away." The reformists liked the ring of the slur "tengu" used by their political enemies and later became the matrix of the radical organization "Tengu-to" [天狗党] that connected to the Meiji Restoration.

The Mito reformists, enraged by the provocative acts of the West in the waters around Japan, strongly asserted that the Sonno Joi of the Mito school must move from thought into the execution stage. Tokugawa Nariaki's sweeping reform influenced other domains as well. The lower and middle samurai who had been inconspicuous throughout the Edo period began seeking opportunity for themselves and traveled to Mito Domain to study. Yet the rulers of the shogunate did not move. The symbolic events of the gradually beginning turbulent Bakumatsu period unfolded.

Around the mid-1850s, the sickly thirteenth shogun Tokugawa Iesada had no heir, and shogunal politics split in two. One side prioritized traditional bloodline above all and pushed the young Tokugawa Iemochi of Kishu Domain (present-day Wakayama). The other side asserted that governing talent was more important than bloodline for surviving the national crisis and pushed the brilliant Tokugawa Yoshinobu. The former was the conservative "Nanki faction," and the latter was the reformist "Hitotsubashi faction." This split was the moment at which the problem of political dynamics that had continued since the start of the Edo period surfaced, and it gradually came under the influence of Wa moving toward unification.

In the midst of this bifurcation of the shogunate over the question of the shogun's successor, the conclusion of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce with the United States arose as the issue. The shogunate which had already lost its power to control indicated its intent to sign, but to avoid the impression that the shogunate had yielded to the United States, it appealed directly to the imperial court that held up the emperor. The intent was to transfer the locus of responsibility from the Tokugawa house to the imperial house and to position the court as having yielded to American pressure. This issue became the spark that deepened the antagonism between Edo and Kyoto. The shogunate's intent was shattered by Emperor Komei who thoroughly detested any future of Western intervention in Japan. Emperor Komei rejected the shogunate's request and showed the position of absolutely never yielding to American coercion, and the shogunate was driven into a corner. This decision by Emperor Komei was more than sufficient grounds for the rapid rise of the Sonno Joi faction, and the tone of overthrowing the shogunate as the quicker path became increasingly conspicuous.

Within this unsettled era, the elder of the Nanki faction Ii Naosuke appeared. Ii Naosuke became “tairo” as the highest authority of the shogunate, ignored the emperor's command, signed the Treaty of Amity and Commerce with the United States by his own authority, and decided the next shogun would be Tokugawa Iemochi of the Nanki faction. Tokugawa Iemochi was installed as the fourteenth shogun, but he was only twelve years old at the time. A child shogun could not possibly handle the chaotically collapsing shogunal politics, and resistance against Ii Naosuke's dictatorial hard-line measures became active in many places. Seeing this as their chance, the Sonno Joi faction of Mito Domain that held up the anti-Ii Naosuke banner rose all at once. Ii Naosuke declared that he would sweep away his opposition and began a campaign of extreme suppression. Through the suppression that continued from 1858 to 1859, the daimyo (powerful feudal lords) of the rival Hitotsubashi faction were dismissed one after another, and people who criticized the shogunate were executed in succession. This major incident is called the "Ansei Purge." It was a major turning point. The selection through which Wa would unify had gradually begun. I suspect this is the reason no dictator ever emerged in Japan. Wa uses those who hold particular ideologies but never pushes them up to an absolute position. Here lies the basal layer related to Japan's distinctive reception of other cultures.

Ii Naosuke positioned the lord of Mito Domain who led the Hitotsubashi faction Tokugawa Nariaki as his greatest enemy and ordered him to lifelong house arrest within Mito Domain. This humiliation toward their lord was more than sufficient cause for the young samurai of Mito Domain who had cultivated Sonno Joi thought to radicalize. Holding up the cause of restoring honor to their lord, they gradually threw themselves into underground activity. The Mito samurai who made the decision to abandon the shogunate at the first stroke of the Ansei Purge left their domain on their own initiative so as not to cause trouble for the domain or their lord, hid in Edo, and set the assassination plan against Ii Naosuke into motion. To leave a domain meant to remove oneself from the domain's registry and become an unaffiliated ronin. This action by the Mito samurai dispersed and weakened the Wa of Mito Domain that had been inherited as the spirit of the Mito school, flowed into underground activity, and was eventually transmuted into the principal thought of the radical faction. At that moment the lofty Wa cultivated in Mito Domain lost its potential to become the force of unification. From this point Mito Domain fell from the stage of the hegemonic struggle, and these samurai came to be called the Mito ronin.

On March 24, 1860, the Mito ronin succeeded in the assassination of Ii Naosuke. The shogunate's conservative faction having lost its leader completely lost the power to rebuild. This incident opened the turbulent 1860s. What is interesting about Japan is this. The state of Bakumatsu that appears at first glance to be chaotic and lacking unity actually held considerably unified movement. I think this is the influence of Confucian teaching having soaked into the body and spirit of the samurai throughout the Edo period. Seen differently, in the Bakumatsu period Confucian teaching was elevated in a way that transformed Wa, and Wa began to encompass as one those people who appeared to be split into enemies and allies. By this era Wa had already unified the people of differing positions and beliefs across the land, and the problem was only where the final point of belonging would be decided. As noted, that point of belonging was neither the shogunate nor the court but a domain. The single force of Wa that the shogunate and the court had been forming was reaching the transitional fate of being swallowed by one of the domains. This process itself took more than a thousand years to occur, but the Wa that would unify the Japanese archipelago had at last begun to show its form.

The one that ultimately seized the initiative was Choshu Domain. From here I will read the nature of the Wa of Choshu Domain in the Bakumatsu period. This Wa became the wellspring carrying the principal character of the Wa of modern Japan. The matrix that formed the wellspring of Choshu's Wa connecting to the modern era was Yoshida Shoin. Born in 1830 in present-day Hagi City of Yamaguchi Prefecture, Yoshida Shoin had two important characteristics. His thoroughgoing practical pursuit of fulfilling objectives, and his distinctive military science. The former was cultivated by Wang Yangming thought within Confucianism, and the latter derived from the Yamaga-ryu military science taught by his uncle. Shoin acquired the Yamaga-ryu military science as one of the two major schools of military science in the Edo period from his uncle and became a military science instructor at the domain's Meirinkan academy at the age of nine. At fifteen he had mastered the other major school, the Naganuma-ryu military science. The reason the young Yoshida Shoin became a marker is that he was a critical figure who held the conviction that Japan could not win a war against the West that was carrying out repeated provocations by relying on Japanese military science alone.

The figure who had immense influence on the young Shoin was the Hirado Domain thinker Hayama Sanai in present-day Hirado City of Nagasaki Prefecture. Hayama analyzed the cause of Qing China's defeat to Britain in the Opium War and asserted that the cause lay in the overwhelming military force of the West and in the disruption of China's internal politics through opium and Christianity. In Japan's case, Christianity had been excluded as of the early Edo period and opium had not entered, so the problem was narrowed to military force.

Building on this analysis of Qing's defeat, Hayama pointed out the limitations of domestic military science and argued that unless Japan quickly introduced Western military science and used it to form coastal defense, it would be invaded. In 1850 Shoin studied under Hayama and was deeply moved by his master's epochal thinking. The realization by one of the foremost figures of Japanese military science that military confrontation with the West could not be sustained on the current basis became the driving force of the upheaval of the Bakumatsu period. Yoshida Shoin worshipped the "Sonno" (reverence of the emperor) within the Sonno Joi thought of the Mito school but perceived that “Joi" (expelling the foreigner) was at present impossible. This variation of Sonno Joi must not be overlooked. The Sonno Joi thought reinterpreted within Yoshida Shoin was eventually inherited by his Choshu Domain disciples who venerated him as master and became linked in a distorted form to the success of the Meiji Restoration.

While advocating Sonno, Yoshida Shoin asserted that Joi should not be carried out now but that Japan must first thoroughly learn the military science of the West (military force) and raise its military capacity before carrying out Joi. As a practical activist, he tried to stand at the head of this effort himself and boarded a Russian warship and the Black Ships. He drew the ire of the shogunate and was regarded as a dangerous figure by the 1850s. With his actions treated as a problem, Yoshida Shoin was finally placed under house arrest in Choshu, and the possibility of changing the future by his own hand was temporarily severed. He changed his thinking entirely. Even if he could not fulfill the objective himself, those who followed could realize it. He took over the private academy called Shoka Sonjuku that his uncle had run and drilled his thought into the young of Choshu. At Shoka Sonjuku, Yoshida Shoin's distinctive Sonno Joi thought was taught, and at the same time the practical combat ability cultivation distinctive to a military science instructor was drilled in Spartan style. Within the absolute relationship between master and disciple, training beyond imagination was carried out. The reality of Shoka Sonjuku under the leader Yoshida Shoin was that it was a terrorist training organization. What Yoshida Shoin drilled into his disciples was the thought of absolute fulfillment of objectives, and the intense radical thought of "not flinching from killing those in the way for the sake of the objective" was transmitted within Shoka Sonjuku.

Meirinkan was a domain academy, so restrictions were placed on the transmission of radical thought. Shoka Sonjuku was an institution he ran personally, so whatever was taught did not leak outside. The young men of Choshu Domain inherited the thought of their absolute leader Yoshida Shoin and grew into the leading figures of the later Meiji Restoration. Through the existence of Yoshida Shoin, Wa contained radical thought. This was revived around the 1930s when the militarization of modern Japan accelerated. With Shoka Sonjuku and Meirinkan disciples becoming rulers of the Meiji government, the Wa transformed through Yoshida Shoin as matrix flowed into the system of modern Japan.

But it did not flow in purely. As noted, if a charismatic dictator were ever to reign over Japan, Yoshida Shoin would have been the one to grasp the final hegemony. History did not go that way. Wa contained intense radical thought but chose to cut it off for the sake of unification.

Having become unneeded and abandoned by Wa, Yoshida Shoin gradually grew impatient and began to run amok. Enraged at Ii Naosuke's unilateral signing of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce in 1858, Shoin announced before his disciples a plan to assassinate Manabe Akikatsu as Ii Naosuke's right hand and a roju (one of the highest-ranking government posts), and he strongly demanded their declaration of participation. The method called "keppan" (blood seal) was taken. This was a distinctive practice of Edo-period samurai of cutting one's finger with a blade and pressing a seal in the flowing blood, and it was a samurai-style oath staking one's life that once the blood seal was pressed, no change in opinion or position was permitted until the objective was fulfilled. Contrary to Yoshida Shoin's calculation, only seventeen of the approximately ninety disciples agreed with the master's plan. The principal disciples whom Shoin had always rated highly all turned against him.

Shoin raged at his disciples' dissent. He wrote letters of severance to the principal disciples Kusaka Genzui and Takasugi Shinsaku and excoriated them. Kusaka and Takasugi, along with the Choshu Domain leader and close friend of Shoin Katsura Kogoro, argued to Shoin that killing one official would not topple the shogunate and that assassinating a roju would result in Choshu Domain being attacked as an enemy. They tried to persuade him many times to change his method, but there was no way to stop Shoin who had already entered a state of running amok. The plan was leaked to the Choshu Domain leadership. Shoin was imprisoned and later sent to Edo, where he was executed in the Ansei Purge led by Ii Naosuke.

The incident of their venerated master executed by the shogunate at the age of twenty-nine struck the young men of Choshu with intense shock. They inherited their master's will and resolved to definitely overthrow the shogunate. Yet their main axis dyed in Shoin's intent split greatly with the master gone. The Wa of Choshu Domain transformed under Shoin began to show different variations. With the radicals who had agreed to Shoin's plan swept out of Choshu Domain, planned execution toward fulfilling the objective became possible.

The movement split into two leading disciples. Kusaka Genzui plotted not to overthrow the shogunate by force but first to take over Choshu Domain itself and then use Choshu Domain to take over the shogunate. Takasugi Shinsaku held no interest in such political calculation and organized on his own the militia called Kiheitai that mixed farmers and townspeople with samurai. He plotted to fulfill the objective purely through military means. The movements of the two principal disciples after Shoin's death influenced the movements of the young Choshu disciples left behind. What is interesting is that neither survived to the Meiji Restoration. The protagonists who seemed at every turn to be making the future kept falling, and the people who remained at the end built the Meiji government. This is a fascinating phenomenon and can only be read through the perspective of Wa. In a sense, Japan does not need heroes.

Kusaka shifted his policy to expanding power within the domain and aimed to make Choshu Domain into the symbol of Sonno Joi. When Ii Naosuke was assassinated by the Mito ronin, the Choshu Domain leadership began to lean toward Sonno Joi as Kusaka had calculated. Kusaka allied with Katsura Kogoro, swept out the opposition forces, and succeeded in taking over Choshu Domain in no time. With the official backing of Choshu Domain and abundant funds as support, in 1862 Kusaka boldly entered Kyoto as the domain's representative. The Kyoto of the time was a battleground of intense activity where many Mito ronin (Tengu-to) further radicalized by Ii Naosuke's assassination were hiding and assassinations occurred daily. Samurai like the Mito ronin who had left their domains had to hide, but Kusaka was able to take up his base at the Choshu Domain residence in Kyoto openly and move around with abundant budget as official domain diplomacy. This difference decisively divided the Meiji Restoration. The Mito ronin had already lost the force to unify the Wa cultivated in Mito Domain and had no means of contending with the Wa on the Choshu side.

The objective Kusaka aimed at in Kyoto was to move the court and draw out an imperial decree of Joi from the shogunate to "remove the Western powers by force." As noted, Kusaka under Shoin's influence also knew that direct confrontation with the West could not be won, but once the emperor's decree was received, the shogunate would have to obey the command and wage war against the West. The shogunate would inevitably be defeated, and Kusaka plotted to take over the weakened shogunate with Choshu Domain. This "cunning calculation" became the decisive turning point that would later be spoken of as "the Wa of Japan." The Wa spoken of in the modern era as "the pure Japanese spirit" was nothing of the kind. The substance was a cunning strategy for weakening the shogunate. With Kusaka's arrival in Kyoto, the pure thought of Joi cultivated in Mito Domain completely lost its content. When thought loses its content and is transmuted into a slogan, people invariably run amok.

Kusaka cried out Joi as a political trap while knowing it could not be executed and began the scheme to legally destroy the authority of the shogunate and transfer actual power to Choshu Domain. As Yoshida Shoin had been, no samurai of Choshu Domain believed in Joi. While crying Sonno Joi outwardly, they did not actually believe it. This perspective is critical. They did not believe in Sonno either. The Choshu samurai after Yoshida Shoin's death became the matrix that created the great turn of using Mito school thought as hollow political instrument. They carried out a violent revolution as a tool for grasping the hegemony held by the Tokugawa shogunal house. As a matter of result, those people built the modern Japanese system.

The militia created by Takasugi Shinsaku mixed not only samurai but also farmers and townspeople. Through the different movement of the principal disciples beginning with Yoshida Shoin, the foundation of the recklessness later executed by Imperial Japan was already being laid. That is the conception of "total mobilization" [総動員体制] of the people aimed at military victory which I will discuss in a later part. Yoshida Shoin's teaching echoes in its shadow, and the thought of offering one's own life and killing those in the way for the sake of fulfilling objectives runs throughout. This lineage was the wellspring that produced the kamikaze in the Second World War period. The distorted Sonno Joi thought of Choshu Domain was kneaded not in Edo but in Kyoto where the emperor was held up, and it continued to transform.

In 1862 when Kusaka entered Kyoto as Choshu Domain's representative, Satsuma Domain also entered Kyoto. The two domains that would become the leading figures of the Meiji Restoration gathered in Kyoto, and at this time both were impatient at having fallen behind another domain. That was Tosa Domain in present-day Kochi. In the summer of 1861, Takechi Hanpeita formed the Tosa Kinnoto to practice the Sonno Joi thought of Tosa Domain. As leader he repeatedly contacted Kusaka Genzui and Katsura Kogoro of Choshu and the radical samurai of Satsuma in Edo, secretly holding the design of the three domains cooperating to develop a Sonno Joi movement. The Tosa Domain itself was not on Sonno Joi at the time, so the Tosa Kinnoto entered Kyoto independently. In 1862, as Choshu Domain moved toward Sonno Joi, Tosa Domain also moved. With the backing of their domains, Tosa Domain, Choshu Domain, and Satsuma Domain entered Kyoto openly. All three were on the western edge of Japan far from the Edo of the Tokugawa shogunal house, and this is important. Among the three, only Satsuma Domain did not lean toward Sonno Joi and held to Kobu Gattai as its policy of realizing shogunal reform through the authority of the court. Tosa Domain and Choshu Domain cooperated in their objectives, but Satsuma Domain differed in policy from the start. This divergence in domain policy became the direct cause of the fierce struggle over government hegemony after the Meiji Restoration.

The stage they chose to compete over the next hegemony was not Edo but Kyoto where the emperor resided. The domain that announced itself first would gain the right to embrace the emperor and the plan to challenge and take over the Edo of the Tokugawa shogunal house. The three domains that entered Kyoto radicalized as if competing in results, and they carried out assassinations daily and plunged the city into terror.

With their various calculations intersecting, the three domains began the preliminary skirmish over the next hegemony in Kyoto. An unexpected incident occurred the following year of 1863. At the end of summer 1863, Satsuma Domain and Aizu Domain in present-day Fukushima Prefecture received the secret command of Emperor Komei who was the protagonist of Sonno and expelled Choshu Domain from Kyoto. Emperor Komei supported Joi and had no doubt about Sonno Joi itself, but he sensed that Choshu Domain aimed at overthrowing the shogunate and changed his attitude completely. Emperor Komei expressed strong opposition to radical overthrow of the shogunate on the grounds that it would disrupt domestic order, and he particularly detested the self-conceited arrogance of Choshu Domain. The shock of the emperor siding with the Sonno Joi side of Satsuma and Aizu was immense for the people of Choshu Domain. If they defied the command of the emperor as the absolute existence of Sonno, the cause for their own movement would lose ground. Kusaka was driven from Kyoto by the political shift within the city and had to retreat to Choshu. The samurai of Choshu Domain raged at this Kyoto political shift.

Just before the political shift in May, Choshu Domain had bombarded Western ships at Shimonoseki and held the self-conceit of having put Joi into practice. They saw themselves as the leaders of Sonno Joi, and their pride was greatly wounded. They could not raise the flag of revolt against the emperor, so Choshu accumulated resentment against the Satsuma that had betrayed them. Satsuma and Choshu had differed in policy from the start, so from Satsuma's perspective it was an appropriate judgment, but the intense heat of Choshu once ignited was stretched so tight that it could not be maintained without an imagined enemy. Choshu Domain positioned Satsuma Domain as its greatest enemy and began to assert that the emperor had been brainwashed by Satsuma Domain. At this moment Sonno Joi had already transferred to private interest. The contact of the Wa of Choshu, Satsuma, and Tosa in Kyoto altered them, and with Choshu's forced retreat the room emerged for sharpening Choshu's Wa anew. This contact in Kyoto was indispensable for the unification of Wa.

Choshu having strengthened its radical thought mobilized its troops the following summer under the banner of "recapturing Kyoto," entered Kyoto again, and moved to kidnap the emperor and forcibly install him as leader to "fulfill Choshu's objective." Yoshida Shoin's teaching lived on here, but Yoshida Shoin was not there.

The shogunate sensed Choshu's unsettling movement and immediately ordered Aizu, Satsuma, and Kuwana Domains to subjugate Choshu. As a result, Choshu was defeated and Kusaka committed suicide in a shocking conclusion. Kusaka was still twenty-five. Yoshida Shoin's Sonno Joi failed, and Kusaka's Sonno Joi through the takeover of Choshu Domain also failed. Immediately afterward the Western bombardment of Shimonoseki occurred, and Choshu at last judged that Joi was impossible. The shogunate did not miss the weakening of Choshu Domain as the leading existence of the anti-shogunate movement and immediately began the Choshu subjugation operation. The country took on the appearance of internal warfare beyond foreign exclusion. In this first Choshu subjugation, Choshu Domain pledged submission to the shogunate, and the domain's policy moved from the reformist faction back to the conservative faction. Yet the transformation of Wa that had once moved toward unification could not be stopped by anyone. In this unprecedented crisis, Takasugi Shinsaku as the other principal disciple of Yoshida Shoin appeared. He raised troops in December 1864 and pulled the domain's policy back to overthrowing the shogunate in no time.

Choshu Domain having regained its breath was still hampered by the shogunate's prohibition on purchasing weapons. The two ronin who left Tosa Domain and worked behind the scenes here were Sakamoto Ryoma and Nakaoka Shintaro. Nakaoka who was trusted by Choshu from the start persuaded the post-Kusaka Choshu Domain leader Katsura Kogoro and took on the role of persuading them toward alliance with Satsuma Domain. As the condition of alliance, weapons supply was fully promised. The one who took charge of weapons supply was Sakamoto Ryoma. He founded the Kameyama Shachu as Japan's first Joint-stock company in Nagasaki and used the Glover Trading Company run by a Scottish arms dealer to smuggle and secretly sell Western weapons in great quantity. Choshu was officially prohibited from purchasing weapons, so as a condition of alliance with Satsuma he proposed that Satsuma would conduct the transactions and supply weapons to Choshu via Satsuma.

This weapons transaction was attractive for Choshu's revival, and through the guidance of Sakamoto Ryoma and Nakaoka Shintaro, Choshu concluded a military alliance with Satsuma at the Satsuma Domain residence in Kyoto in March 1866. This military alliance was secret and was not made public until after the establishment of the Meiji government. People at the time of the Meiji Restoration did not know that Choshu and Satsuma had allied. The content was that if Choshu went to war with the shogunate, Satsuma would provide rear support (weapons supply and military support) to Choshu. The reason this was kept private was to let the shogunate lower its guard. The shogunate overconfidently believed that since Satsuma had complied in the previous Choshu invasion operation and expelled Choshu together with Aizu, Satsuma would comply again. However, behind the scenes Satsuma had Joined hands with Choshu and decided not to obey the shogunate's intent.

Just after the private establishment of the alliance between Satsuma Domain and Choshu Domain, the Second Choshu Subjugation began in June 1866. Satsuma refused the shogunate's command and gave military support to Choshu, and Choshu somehow fought through the fierce war with the shogunal army. When the shogun installed by the shogunal conservatives Tokugawa Iemochi died in July, the shogunal army (conservative faction) had effectively been defeated. When this happens, everything collapses in succession. Emperor Komei died in January 1867, and Emperor Meiji backed by Choshu Domain ascended the throne. The shogunate proposed in November to return real power to the court, and in December the new era under imperial leadership was declared.

In the midst of this, Sakamoto Ryoma and Nakaoka Shintaro were assassinated in Kyoto by unknown parties. The truth of the assassination of the leading figures of the Meiji Restoration remains shrouded in mystery, but they too were no longer needed. In January 1868, the Meiji Restoration finally opened its curtain, and the unprecedented civil war called the Battle of Toba-Fushimi began.

When 1868 dawned, the forces centered on Satsuma Domain put forward the policy of completely excluding the shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu from the new government to end the hegemony of the Tokugawa shogunal house. Dissatisfaction rose among the former shogunate forces, and enraged at the provocative acts of ronin including Satsuma Domain samurai in Edo, they set fire to the Satsuma Domain residence. When this news reached the former shogunate forces who had set up base at Osaka Castle, the hard-liners gained momentum. Tokugawa Yoshinobu rode the wave and advanced fifteen thousand troops centered on Aizu and Kuwana forces toward Kyoto. The new government army centered on Satsuma and Choshu numbered only about five thousand, but the two armies clashed head-on at Toba and Fushimi in the southern outskirts of Kyoto. The new government army had already acquired Western weapons in large quantities and drove the former shogunate army into a corner. What was decisive was that the court completely yielded to the new government army.

The new government army was given the cause of being an army moving under the emperor's command, and the former shogunate army was positioned as the enemy of the court. The effect was immense. The former shogunate army collapsed easily, and in the spring of 1868, Edo Castle was surrendered and the new government army won. This movement means that the Wa accumulated by Choshu and Satsuma Domains became one under the protection of the emperor and was given the cause to exclude every force outside that "one." The new government that succeeded in holding up the emperor then entered the final war. Which between Choshu Domain and Satsuma Domain would grasp the hegemony.

Before that, Choshu Domain plotted revenge against Aizu Domain that had driven it into a corner. The Choshu-affiliated forces within the new government army who held a fairly personal animosity against Aizu Domain pushed their resentment against Satsuma onto Aizu and invaded Hokuriku and the various regions of Tohoku to carry out massacre. Tohoku regions yielded to the new government army under massacre too cruel to comprehend. At the siege of Aizu Wakamatsu Castle as the base of the Aizu Domain hated by Choshu Domain, a massacre beyond imagination was carried out. Because the leadership of the Meiji government was occupied by Choshu affiliates, this is still justified today.

The Choshu-affiliated forces having exacted their personal revenge established the new government. After accumulating power for a little while, in 1877 they moved against the Satsuma-affiliated forces against whom they likewise held resentment and developed the war that drove the Satsuma leader Saigo Takamori to suicide. The new government was thus established, and the turbulent era born from a single Wa was intensely transformed in the end by the Wa formed by Choshu Domain after Yoshida Shoin. In the flow of the establishment of the Meiji government as a single Wa, Aizu Domain and other domains against which Choshu Domain held personal resentment were swept away through massacre. The Aizu people who remained were expelled from their homeland and moved to settle remote frontier land. When the movement to remove Satsuma Domain's power was shown, the foundation of what would later be spoken of as "the Wa of Japan" was completely finished.

Seen through this perspective of Wa, the distorted problems of modern Japan can also be read. At the basic level, the regions where nuclear power plants are built are without exception the regions that the new government army of the time treated as enemies and where they carried out slaughter. Fukushima Prefecture which contains the Aizu Domain in western Fukushima is symbolic. As can be understood from its becoming the stage of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident, this too was formed by the dynamics of Meiji. Fukushima Prefecture which was Choshu's greatest enemy is still the region with the lowest rate of broadcast signal coverage in Japan. There are countless examples of this kind. While people speak of "the Wa of Japan," the substance does not contain Japan. This is self-evident. How to see this outside is the problem, and to see it the inside must be seen first.

The history in which the Wa of Choshu centered on Yoshida Shoin built the foundation of Imperial Japan is not spoken of. Wa is not a simple unified body. It is the force that forms history itself, and it is deeply involved in the actions of the Japanese. After the modern era, Wa was translated as "the logic of Choshu," and in the process of putting it into words, the Meiji Constitution and the National Mobilization Law were born. When I think this way, I see how far from essential the history we conventionally speak of is.

I believe that the contemporary world's struggle between multipolar and unipolar or bipolar worlds becomes visible by reading this era. Please read the present from that perspective.