During the reign of the Emperor Nin-ko, in the first year of the Tempo era, which corresponded to A.D. 1830, there was born in Cho-shiu province, south-west Niphon, Yoshida Torajiro, the son of samurai parents, who were retainers of the dai-mio Mori, the lord of the fief. Yoshida’s birthplace was the little village of Matsushita (Under the pines), close to the town of Hagi, on the west coast of Niphon, facing the peninsula of Korea. From his earliest years Yoshida was an ardent student of Chinese literature, and exhibited an extreme cleverness as a child that won for him uncommon fame in the district. So proficient had he become in this department of study that at the age of eleven he was called on to lecture on a topic of military history in the presence of his feudal chieftain, the dai-mio Mori Kei-shin, and his erudition was the source of the utmost astonishment to his hearers. When he was nineteen he set out on a tour through the island of Kiu-shiu, his main object being to make the acquaintance of those prominent men in the south of Japan who just then had raised the cry of “loyalty to the Emperor, expulsion of all foreigners.” This sentiment, it will be observed, did not have its origin in the later fifties, as might have been supposed from the frequency with which it was then heard, after Perry’s visits had led to the conclusion of treaties of peace and amity, but was prevalent as far back as the year 1849, when the only aliens in the country were a few Dutchmen at Nagasaki. The feeling at that time was perhaps only local, for it was to the vicinity of that port that Yoshida wended his way in the evident belief that he would there meet with those who most strongly entertained this opinion of the proper course to be taken with the intruders. No doubt his youthful impressions had been stimulated by the reading of the Nihon Gaishi, a work on Japanese history, written by Rai Sanyo, that at that period was intensely popular. His father’s influence, moreover, was all in the same direction, and the circumstances all point to Yoshida’s having imbibed principles that were distinctly adverse to the retention of foreigners in the country under any conditions whatever. Precisely what effect his travels in Kiushiu had on his mind can never be known, but it may be assumed with tolerable safety that he journeyed to Nagasaki and there saw the Dutchmen dwelling in their own fashion in the quaint little settlement of Deshima, where they were all but prisoners, though allowed to carry on their trade.

In the meantime the Emperor Ko-mei, father of the reigning monarch, had succeeded Ninko on the throne, and the era bore the title of Ka-ei. It lasted until 1854, and it was when it was in its fourth year that Yoshida went to Yedo and there met, as described in a previous chapter, with Sakuma Shozan, whose pupil he became. At this time Sakuma was forty years old, and Yoshida was twenty-two. From their first meeting Yoshida recognised in the elder man a greatness of intellect and grandeur of aim that fascinated him, and led him there and then to appreciate the opportunity afforded him of becoming Sakuma’s disciple. More especially was he convinced of the soundness of Sakuma’s views on the importance of coast defence, and at his suggestion undertook a journey into the provinces of Sagami and Awa, with the express object of searching out the most suitable positions, from a strategical point of view, for the defence of Yedo Bay. It will be perceived, as constituting a matter of no trifling interest, that the defence of the coast was under anxious consideration two years at least prior to the arrival off Uraga of Commodore Perry and his squadron of “black ships,” so that it cannot be said that these measures were proposed as a direct consequence of the American expedition’s advent in Japanese waters. After visiting Awa and Sagami Yoshida went north to the Tsugaru Straits and Hakodate, having the same purpose ever before him, the strengthening of his country’s defences against the intrusion of foreign powers.

In 1853, the year of Perry’s arrival, Yoshida was again in Yedo, but in September of that year he went once more to Nagasaki. His secret purpose was then to embark for Europe in a Russian cruiser, but by the time he reached the port named the vessel had sailed, so that his hopes were entirely frustrated. Sakuma had recommended him to make his way to Europe, if possible, because, as he said, if Yoshida desired to form an adequate idea of the most efficient means of providing for the security of the Japanese coasts it was first requisite that he should fully comprehend the conditions under which the protection of their own coasts was successfully undertaken by foreign nations. It was on this advice that he sought by every means at his command to obtain a passage to some foreign land, and in the following year, when the American warships again visited Uraga, Yoshida made his next attempt, in company with a faithful servant who very possibly hoped also to get away to a land where there would be no restrictions on their movements, and entire liberty of thought could be secured. It is a matter for regret that his ambitions in this regard were once more frustrated, for in Yoshida there can be no doubt that Japan had a truly patriotic son, one who, had the opportunity been afforded him, would have achieved distinct success in the direction which he had marked out for himself, the preservation of Japan for the Japanese. In Yoshida’s case, as in all others with which I am acquainted, the innate patriotism that he had inherited had been aroused and stimulated by the experiences that the neighbouring Chinese Empire had undergone. In common with other people in the Far East, he had heard of the occupation of Canton, and of Chusan, of the expedition up the Yang-tsu-kiang, and of the forcible opening to foreign commerce of the ports of Ningpo, Amoy, and Shanghai. Such doings were of dire portent for the dwellers in Dai Niphon, for if the Chinese, who for so many centuries had in the arts and sciences led Japan, found themselves reduced to the necessity of conforming to the will of the Western invaders, by reason of a laxity in preparation for national defence, how much more incumbent must it be upon the Japanese, with only their islands to call their own, and no hinterland to retire into, strenuously to make ready for eventualities. Yoshida’s request for a passage to the United States was refused,—Commodore Perry mentions him as Isagi Kooda,—and he was imprisoned for having attempted to quit Japan at a time when emigration was forbidden.

In the following year Yoshida was confined to his own house at Matsushima, in the province of Cho-shiu, but a year later, in the third of the An-sei era, the discipline was so far relaxed as to admit of his taking pupils for the study of military books. It was probably at this period that he wrote to a Court noble, by name Ohara Shigetami, who held very similar views on the subject of the foreigners’ invasion, begging him to visit Cho-shiu for the purpose of starting an agitation there in favour of the “expulsion of barbarians and the restoration of the Ten-shi to supreme control,” that twofold object on which a majority of the patriots of the age laid stress in the belief that its attainment was wholly indispensable to the welfare of the nation. In truth Yoshida’s teaching of military subjects was little more than a cover for the inoculation of his pupils with the principles of a most resolute antagonism to the Bakufu—i.e. the system of government by the Tokugawa line of Sho-guns, a plan of vicarious rule in which he could discern nothing for his country but disaster. A school was at this time opened in the village of Matsushima by two uncles of Yoshida Sho-in, named Kubo and Tamaki, and after a while Yoshida succeeded them in the management thereof; it deserves more than a passing reference, for it was destined to be the cradle, as it were, of the revolution of 1868, by which the present Emperor was led to abandon the life of utter seclusion that it had for centuries been customary for the occupants of the Japanese throne to lead, and to take upon himself the actual rule of his dominions. Among those who attended this school were not a few to whom fell the lot of fighting, a short time afterwards, at Fushimi, in the tremendous contest for supremacy which took place between the adherents of the Sho-gun and those who sided with Choshiu and Satsuma.

Yoshida conducted the village school for two years and a half, from July 1856 to December 1858, but in the latter month he was arrested, and thrown into gaol for having, it was alleged, incited his pupils to plot against the Tokugawa dynasty, and planned the assassination, his enemies asserted, of the Minister Manabe Norikatsu, a member of the Government. It is certain, whatever degree of guilt may have attached to him in other respects, that he consistently challenged the wisdom of the Tokugawa’s foreign policy, and advocated most zealously the abolition of that form of administration, becoming in consequence the object of a most determined persecution by the Yedo Government.

After an incarceration lasting five months in his native province he was transferred to the Temmacho Prison in Yedo, and its doors closed over him in July 1859. On the 27th of October following he was decapitated in obedience to the orders of the Bakufu, and thus at the early age of twenty-nine ended the career of one of Japan’s most earnest patriots. While his aim was the retention of Japan for the Japanese, and his determined antagonism to the Shogunate arose from its willingness to enter into treaties for the opening of the Empire to foreign trade, the object sought by his followers was the destruction of the Tokugawa dynasty itself, and their opposition to foreign intercourse proceeded not from antipathy to the Occidentals so much as from a paramount desire to put an end to the dual form of administration. The cry of “Expulsion of the Alien” was raised by Yoshida’s disciples in the expectation that acts inimical to the strangers would embroil the Bakufu with those Western Powers, the subjects of which were by degrees attaining a foothold in the country, and that government by the Shogunate would then become an impossibility.