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Samurai Revolution: The Dawn of Modern Japan Seen Through the Eyes of the Shogun's Last Samurai
See the dawn of modern Japan through the lens of the power players who helped shape it -- as well as those who fought against it -- in this exploration of Samurai history.
Samurai Revolution tells the fascinating story of Japan's historic transformation at the end of the nineteenth century from a country of shoguns, feudal lords and samurai to a modern industrialized nation. The book covers the turbulent Meiji Period from 1868 to 1912, widely considered "the dawn of modern Japan," a time of Samurai history in which those who choose to cling to their traditional bushido way of life engaged in frequent and often deadly clashes with champions of modernization. Knowledge of this period is essential to understand how and why Japan evolved into the nation it is today.
The book opens with the fifteen-year fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate, which had ruled Japan for over 250 years, and the restoration of the Meiji emperor to a position of power at the expense of the feudal Daimyo lords. It chronicles the bloody first decade of the newly reestablished monarchy, in which the new government worked desperately to consolidate its power and introduce the innovations that would put Japan on equal footing with the Western powers threatening to dominate it. Finally, Samurai Revolution goes on to tell the story of the Satsuma Rebellion, a failed coup attempt that is widely viewed as the final demise of the samurai class in Japan.
This book is the first comprehensive history and analysis in English that includes all the key figures from this dramatic time in Japanese politics and society, and is the result of over twenty-five years of research focused on this critical period in Japanese history. The book contains numerous original translations of crucial documents and correspondence of the time, as well as photographs and maps.
Samurai Revolution goes in-depth to reveal how one era of ended and another began.
Samurai Revolution tells the fascinating story of Japan's historic transformation at the end of the nineteenth century from a country of shoguns, feudal lords and samurai to a modern industrialized nation. The book covers the turbulent Meiji Period from 1868 to 1912, widely considered "the dawn of modern Japan," a time of Samurai history in which those who choose to cling to their traditional bushido way of life engaged in frequent and often deadly clashes with champions of modernization. Knowledge of this period is essential to understand how and why Japan evolved into the nation it is today.
The book opens with the fifteen-year fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate, which had ruled Japan for over 250 years, and the restoration of the Meiji emperor to a position of power at the expense of the feudal Daimyo lords. It chronicles the bloody first decade of the newly reestablished monarchy, in which the new government worked desperately to consolidate its power and introduce the innovations that would put Japan on equal footing with the Western powers threatening to dominate it. Finally, Samurai Revolution goes on to tell the story of the Satsuma Rebellion, a failed coup attempt that is widely viewed as the final demise of the samurai class in Japan.
This book is the first comprehensive history and analysis in English that includes all the key figures from this dramatic time in Japanese politics and society, and is the result of over twenty-five years of research focused on this critical period in Japanese history. The book contains numerous original translations of crucial documents and correspondence of the time, as well as photographs and maps.
Samurai Revolution goes in-depth to reveal how one era of ended and another began.
608 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2014
60 people are currently reading
821 people want to read
About the author
Romulus Hillsborough
14 books43 followersRomulus Hillsborough is a leading Western authority on the political upheaval and samurai active in the Meiji Restoration of 19th-century Japan. His fascination with this history has spanned over four decades, including sixteen years living in Japan, where he conducted original research and interviews with descendants of samurai.
He is the author of several acclaimed books, including Ryoma: Life of a Renaissance Samurai, Samurai Revolution, and Samurai Assassins, as well as the forthcoming Samurai Swordsmen: The Definitive History of the Shinsengumi (Helion, 2026). His work has been praised for its narrative style, historical accuracy, and deep cultural insight.
Hillsborough holds a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Humanities. A longtime practitioner of traditional Japanese martial arts, he has trained in Shotokan karate for over five decades under Tsutomu Ohshima — founder of Shotokan Karate of America and direct student of Gichin Funakoshi, the father of modern karate — bringing a rare, lived connection to the samurai spirit and its enduring legacy.
He also provides historical consulting on Bakumatsu–Meiji Restoration history and related samurai-era topics to authors, editors, publishers, documentarians, producers, screenwriters, translators, and other professionals seeking authoritative guidance.
He is the author of several acclaimed books, including Ryoma: Life of a Renaissance Samurai, Samurai Revolution, and Samurai Assassins, as well as the forthcoming Samurai Swordsmen: The Definitive History of the Shinsengumi (Helion, 2026). His work has been praised for its narrative style, historical accuracy, and deep cultural insight.
Hillsborough holds a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Humanities. A longtime practitioner of traditional Japanese martial arts, he has trained in Shotokan karate for over five decades under Tsutomu Ohshima — founder of Shotokan Karate of America and direct student of Gichin Funakoshi, the father of modern karate — bringing a rare, lived connection to the samurai spirit and its enduring legacy.
He also provides historical consulting on Bakumatsu–Meiji Restoration history and related samurai-era topics to authors, editors, publishers, documentarians, producers, screenwriters, translators, and other professionals seeking authoritative guidance.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
August 31, 2024
When the Legend Becomes Fact, Print the Legend
There are not an overabundance of books on the Meiji Restoration and the end of Tokugawa Japan so it is always a pleasure to find a new one. I very much like the book’s description of the period as a samurai revolution. One thing that has become crystal clear from my reading is that the overthrow of the shogun’s regime bears a marked similarity to other 19th century revolutions. The unique aspects of it as well as the fact that so much else was going on simultaneously (especially Japan’s opening to the outside world) often obscure this fact, but it was a very modern revolution fought over the same basic issues: modernization, broader representation, and nationalism. And while it doesn’t emphasize this quite as much as I would like, the fact that Japan could go through such a revolution so soon after it reached a crisis point (China, for example, took another forty years) shows clearly that the revolution was inevitable due to fatal flaws in the shogunate, although its end may have been less violent and more drawn out without the shock of foreign intervention. The irony of the title is that while it was samurai (especially low-ranking goshi) who led the rebellion their victory meant the end of their entire class.
While that is the book’s overall purpose I was rather surprised to find that the subtitle (thanks to English never adopting a plural noun for samurai) hides that “the shogun’s last samurai” is in fact referring to a single individual: a man called Katsu Kaishu (who I knew as Katsu Rintaro). Yup, this book is actually a biography. The reason for telling the story in this way is obvious: even focusing around one man there are a ridiculous number of figures who come and go (often in an excessively permanent manner), so keeping to one person’s life keeps the topic manageable. It’s not this book’s fault that I just read another called Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration which does the same thing only better. The advantage of telling the story this way is clear, but so are the disadvantages: no one figure was everywhere events were happening so the book unavoidably splits its time running back and forth between one individual’s journey and the story of all Japan. Some chapters barely mention Katsu, others skip major details because they’re irrelevant to his life. It can be awkward yet is unavoidable given the approach.
Again looking to my preconceptions about this book (derived, it must be said, from the book’s own description) I was surprised at how much of it is focused solely on the buildup to the Restoration. The book describes itself as being divided into two books, one on the final years of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the other on the early years of the Meiji Restoration. This is technically true, but deeply misleading as the two “books” are of completely different lengths. The first book contains 436 pages while the second one contains 149. And of those 149 only 66 take place after the Restoration, the rest dealing with the final war to end the bakufu. Not that I didn’t want to know about that (Ryoma died just before the Restoration so his biography missed much of this) but I had hoped to go further here, particularly given the title, and explore in detail Saigo’s Satsuma Rebellion and what the revolutionaries ultimately did once they came to power. That was what I assumed “Samurai Revolution” was referring to. Alas, ’twas not to be. In large part because Katsu himself was not playing a major role during these events.
The bad news about this book is that it’s highly derivative. The only primary sources he relies heavily on are Katsu’s memoirs (written at the end of his life), and while he defends their use it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that he rewrote a fair amount of his past as he looked back from the vantage point of the 1890s. The rest of the book mainly summarizes other secondary sources without too much analysis or criticism. The good news is that those summarized works are mostly in Japanese, meaning that it is at least making a valuable contribution by providing information that would otherwise have been inaccessible to English speakers. He consults a lot of books too. The derivative nature is still obvious at times: he sticks to one source (often Katsu’s) doggedly and you can tell when you shift to another because the viewpoint and occasionally opinions change. This does have the benefit of providing you with multiple viewpoints. I did find the fragmentary format this produced frustrating at times, but the Meiji Restoration is one of those complex revolutions where social and political change is so rapid it’s almost impossible to understand without reading multiple different volumes covering every major faction. Likewise, it’s impossible to tell a simple narrative without jumping back to different topics. In other words, even thoroughly original and academic books would be subject to many of the same problems.
A somewhat more serious issue is that his reasoning can be simplistic and heavily romanticized. He is particularly prone to providing moralizing explanations for events. Example: Mizuno’s financial reforms failed because he lived a hedonistic lifestyle. We’re not told what these reforms entailed nor who resisted them and why. This would take away from the lesson. The claim that the samurai had lost their martial spirit is particularly hard to swallow. I think if there’s one thing we can say for absolute certain about the final years of the Edo Period it’s that the samurai never lost their warrior worldview. The constant assassinations and gory suicides show clearly that there were still plenty of samurai willing to fight and die for their notion of bushido. The reason he comes to this conclusion is that it is what people at the time said. Locked into a culture preaching martial virtue as the key measure of status and success, they could imagine no other explanation for their repeated failures. Pinning successive crises on moral degeneration and softness among the samurai is just adopting the preachy Confucian platitudes that formed the worldview of so many Japanese of the time (not that Christian platitudes were much better). The samurai never went soft, they were simply outdated.
While many of these explanations will not hold up to academic rigor they are not the target audience for this book. I suspect the average history nut will find the book’s clarity and occasional oversimplification to their liking. One of the few serious mistakes in that regard is the use of dates. Rather than giving dates using the solar Gregorian calendar that we use, he reproduces Japan’s native dating system. The system works like this: shortly after an emperor comes to the throne and whenever something particularly inauspicious happens (and at sixty-year intervals regardless) a new era is declared and all dates are counted from that moment. So if you want to know what date is meant you need to get out Wikipedia and look up that Bunkyu 3 (for example) is 1863/4. There will be six other era names (an indication of great disorder) before the adoption of the Western calendar under Meiji. Good luck guessing the months as they’re lunar-based and therefore don’t match the years. When things get out of whack they just add an intercalary month to bring it up to a solar year. He says this is to “give the feel” of life under the shogun, but it will certainly just needlessly confuse people.
Hillsborough is a useful popularizer and translator of Japanese history. This is clearly a vital service. That said, there are probably better books on the topic of the Meiji Restoration out there. I mentioned Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration but there is also another book by that author called The Making of Modern Japan which covers all of Early Modern and Modern Japanese history. The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 5: the Nineteenth Century covers this period as well if you can handle a slightly more academic account. If you want yet another biography, Emperor of Japan is an excellent look at Meiji himself.
* Why on earth are two of the most prominent books on the Meiji Restoration written by guys with the most Roman names ever? Romulus Hillsborough and Marius Jansen? I’ve never met anyone with either name before and to find two writing about the same period is crazy!
There are not an overabundance of books on the Meiji Restoration and the end of Tokugawa Japan so it is always a pleasure to find a new one. I very much like the book’s description of the period as a samurai revolution. One thing that has become crystal clear from my reading is that the overthrow of the shogun’s regime bears a marked similarity to other 19th century revolutions. The unique aspects of it as well as the fact that so much else was going on simultaneously (especially Japan’s opening to the outside world) often obscure this fact, but it was a very modern revolution fought over the same basic issues: modernization, broader representation, and nationalism. And while it doesn’t emphasize this quite as much as I would like, the fact that Japan could go through such a revolution so soon after it reached a crisis point (China, for example, took another forty years) shows clearly that the revolution was inevitable due to fatal flaws in the shogunate, although its end may have been less violent and more drawn out without the shock of foreign intervention. The irony of the title is that while it was samurai (especially low-ranking goshi) who led the rebellion their victory meant the end of their entire class.
While that is the book’s overall purpose I was rather surprised to find that the subtitle (thanks to English never adopting a plural noun for samurai) hides that “the shogun’s last samurai” is in fact referring to a single individual: a man called Katsu Kaishu (who I knew as Katsu Rintaro). Yup, this book is actually a biography. The reason for telling the story in this way is obvious: even focusing around one man there are a ridiculous number of figures who come and go (often in an excessively permanent manner), so keeping to one person’s life keeps the topic manageable. It’s not this book’s fault that I just read another called Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration which does the same thing only better. The advantage of telling the story this way is clear, but so are the disadvantages: no one figure was everywhere events were happening so the book unavoidably splits its time running back and forth between one individual’s journey and the story of all Japan. Some chapters barely mention Katsu, others skip major details because they’re irrelevant to his life. It can be awkward yet is unavoidable given the approach.
Again looking to my preconceptions about this book (derived, it must be said, from the book’s own description) I was surprised at how much of it is focused solely on the buildup to the Restoration. The book describes itself as being divided into two books, one on the final years of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the other on the early years of the Meiji Restoration. This is technically true, but deeply misleading as the two “books” are of completely different lengths. The first book contains 436 pages while the second one contains 149. And of those 149 only 66 take place after the Restoration, the rest dealing with the final war to end the bakufu. Not that I didn’t want to know about that (Ryoma died just before the Restoration so his biography missed much of this) but I had hoped to go further here, particularly given the title, and explore in detail Saigo’s Satsuma Rebellion and what the revolutionaries ultimately did once they came to power. That was what I assumed “Samurai Revolution” was referring to. Alas, ’twas not to be. In large part because Katsu himself was not playing a major role during these events.
The bad news about this book is that it’s highly derivative. The only primary sources he relies heavily on are Katsu’s memoirs (written at the end of his life), and while he defends their use it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that he rewrote a fair amount of his past as he looked back from the vantage point of the 1890s. The rest of the book mainly summarizes other secondary sources without too much analysis or criticism. The good news is that those summarized works are mostly in Japanese, meaning that it is at least making a valuable contribution by providing information that would otherwise have been inaccessible to English speakers. He consults a lot of books too. The derivative nature is still obvious at times: he sticks to one source (often Katsu’s) doggedly and you can tell when you shift to another because the viewpoint and occasionally opinions change. This does have the benefit of providing you with multiple viewpoints. I did find the fragmentary format this produced frustrating at times, but the Meiji Restoration is one of those complex revolutions where social and political change is so rapid it’s almost impossible to understand without reading multiple different volumes covering every major faction. Likewise, it’s impossible to tell a simple narrative without jumping back to different topics. In other words, even thoroughly original and academic books would be subject to many of the same problems.
A somewhat more serious issue is that his reasoning can be simplistic and heavily romanticized. He is particularly prone to providing moralizing explanations for events. Example: Mizuno’s financial reforms failed because he lived a hedonistic lifestyle. We’re not told what these reforms entailed nor who resisted them and why. This would take away from the lesson. The claim that the samurai had lost their martial spirit is particularly hard to swallow. I think if there’s one thing we can say for absolute certain about the final years of the Edo Period it’s that the samurai never lost their warrior worldview. The constant assassinations and gory suicides show clearly that there were still plenty of samurai willing to fight and die for their notion of bushido. The reason he comes to this conclusion is that it is what people at the time said. Locked into a culture preaching martial virtue as the key measure of status and success, they could imagine no other explanation for their repeated failures. Pinning successive crises on moral degeneration and softness among the samurai is just adopting the preachy Confucian platitudes that formed the worldview of so many Japanese of the time (not that Christian platitudes were much better). The samurai never went soft, they were simply outdated.
While many of these explanations will not hold up to academic rigor they are not the target audience for this book. I suspect the average history nut will find the book’s clarity and occasional oversimplification to their liking. One of the few serious mistakes in that regard is the use of dates. Rather than giving dates using the solar Gregorian calendar that we use, he reproduces Japan’s native dating system. The system works like this: shortly after an emperor comes to the throne and whenever something particularly inauspicious happens (and at sixty-year intervals regardless) a new era is declared and all dates are counted from that moment. So if you want to know what date is meant you need to get out Wikipedia and look up that Bunkyu 3 (for example) is 1863/4. There will be six other era names (an indication of great disorder) before the adoption of the Western calendar under Meiji. Good luck guessing the months as they’re lunar-based and therefore don’t match the years. When things get out of whack they just add an intercalary month to bring it up to a solar year. He says this is to “give the feel” of life under the shogun, but it will certainly just needlessly confuse people.
Hillsborough is a useful popularizer and translator of Japanese history. This is clearly a vital service. That said, there are probably better books on the topic of the Meiji Restoration out there. I mentioned Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration but there is also another book by that author called The Making of Modern Japan which covers all of Early Modern and Modern Japanese history. The Cambridge History of Japan, Volume 5: the Nineteenth Century covers this period as well if you can handle a slightly more academic account. If you want yet another biography, Emperor of Japan is an excellent look at Meiji himself.
* Why on earth are two of the most prominent books on the Meiji Restoration written by guys with the most Roman names ever? Romulus Hillsborough and Marius Jansen? I’ve never met anyone with either name before and to find two writing about the same period is crazy!
January 19, 2021
I’ve always wanted to write a story set during the Edo period but realized that I knew very little about that part of Japanese history—or any of it for that matter. I’ve always had this fascination with samurai and the Edo period, but when I decided to do some reading on the subject, I found it very hard to find good books on the topic. Of the few books that were listed on Amazon, I chose Samurai Revolution by Romulus Hillsborough, since it seemed like it would read more like a novel than a boring textbook—fortunately, I was right.
The book is a deep look into the Meiji Restoration (what writers generally refer to as the "Bakumatsu") through the eyes of Katsu Kaishu, the founder of the first Japanese navy and one of the most important men during the Restoration. Based on Kaishu's journals, memoirs, histories, and letters, are great stories of Saigo Takamori, Sakamoto Ryoma, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, and many others, demonstrating not only the political and economic aspects of life during this period but also the cultural and interpersonal sides, which made this beautifully written and well-organized record of the Meiji Restoration, one of the first history books that I had a difficult time putting down. This is a book I highly recommend to anyone—including absolute beginners of Japanese history like myself, interested in the most integral events leading to the modernization of Japan but doesn’t want to read a straight-up textbook.
One suggestion from my own experience reading this book is to not worry about remembering all the names of the people mentioned. It is virtually impossible and unless you are a scholar, those names aren’t as important. There are a handful of people that will be mentioned over and over again and it is those names that I recommend paying most attention to.
The book is a deep look into the Meiji Restoration (what writers generally refer to as the "Bakumatsu") through the eyes of Katsu Kaishu, the founder of the first Japanese navy and one of the most important men during the Restoration. Based on Kaishu's journals, memoirs, histories, and letters, are great stories of Saigo Takamori, Sakamoto Ryoma, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, and many others, demonstrating not only the political and economic aspects of life during this period but also the cultural and interpersonal sides, which made this beautifully written and well-organized record of the Meiji Restoration, one of the first history books that I had a difficult time putting down. This is a book I highly recommend to anyone—including absolute beginners of Japanese history like myself, interested in the most integral events leading to the modernization of Japan but doesn’t want to read a straight-up textbook.
One suggestion from my own experience reading this book is to not worry about remembering all the names of the people mentioned. It is virtually impossible and unless you are a scholar, those names aren’t as important. There are a handful of people that will be mentioned over and over again and it is those names that I recommend paying most attention to.
March 30, 2014
I'm not at all an expert on Japanese history. I have interest in the subject, though, and signed up for a giveaway of this book and won a copy. It's an interesting read, to be sure. The prose is clear and clean, which is always a huge plus for history-related texts. I certainly learned a lot about Japan's Imperial Restoration. Katsu Kaishu's importance in the overall scheme of things is perhaps exaggerated at times--in that he ultimately was not the factor in the early Meiji government the author's focus initially seems to suggest--and I wonder if giving Saigo Takamori the same biographical attention as Kaishu might have been appropriate. Altogether, SAMURAI REVOLUTION does a good job, I suppose, of straddling the line between approaching the Restoration from the view of Katsu, the "last samurai," and spreading liberally to examine key players and events separate from him. An enjoyable read.
December 6, 2017
I really enjoyed the Samurai Revolution because it takes an in depth look into the steps it took for Japan to become an Isolated nation to one of the world's most powerful nations. All the events that happened in this book are real. It shows the how afraid people were to express their political opinion because they might assassinated and political leaders would sleep with guns in there pillows. The main character is Katsu Kaishu but also Sakamoto Ryoma and many others. Overall I enjoyed it.
June 21, 2014
I made a mistake choosing to read this book during the time that was quit busy and I couldn't spend 6 hours a day reading it. The problem here is that it is very hard to follow the book and all the individuals in it if one hasn't touched it for a week. I will have to re read it as I didn't get as much out of it as I should have and next time go for a more quiet and free time. My rating is not based on this as I can differentiate the issues caused by my own reading pattern from the quality of the book. Just saying it so that other readers don't make the same mistake. Especially if you are not familiar with Japanese culture, this makes remembering the names, titles etc. much harder.
But I think the book is excellent. It goes through the time of revolution and shows the rise of modern Japan that got open towards the Western world. 600 pages of great research, there is a fact coming after the fact. But the writing style isn't hard to follow, very fluent and gives one a great view of the situation described. I have never read anything about this time in Japan so many things I read were very new and eye opening for me. A great read for anyone interested in history.
*I got this book for free through giveaways in exchange for an honest review*
But I think the book is excellent. It goes through the time of revolution and shows the rise of modern Japan that got open towards the Western world. 600 pages of great research, there is a fact coming after the fact. But the writing style isn't hard to follow, very fluent and gives one a great view of the situation described. I have never read anything about this time in Japan so many things I read were very new and eye opening for me. A great read for anyone interested in history.
*I got this book for free through giveaways in exchange for an honest review*
December 18, 2017
With its wide scope, impeccable and thorough research drawing on a wide variety of sources not available in English, and clear and eminently readable writing style, Romulus Hillsborough's comprehensive history of the Meiji Restoration and its aftermath is very much a must-read for anyone with an interest in the subject. I found myself thoroughly absorbed in this highly informative work.
July 10, 2017
I must say I have enjoyed all of Romulus Hillsborough books ever since I first discovered his Ryoma: Life of a Renaissance Samurai.
However, Samurai Revolution, is his best work to date and easily my favorite.
Very few writers are able to adequately present Japanese history without either overly romanticizing it or piling on the inevitable cultural judgements of an outsider.
Hillsborough's work does neither. It is honest and bears the stamp of authority. While he clearly comes to the material with genuine appreciation and affection for the men who made these events happen, he does not whitewash or overly glorify them. If anything, he presents men like Katsu Kaishū and Tokugawa Yoshinobu as genuine human beings - warts and all. I especially appreciated the passage near the end of the book in which he details Yoshinobu's reaction to Kaish'ū's final act of loyalty. Like all books this one was a journey and for me that moment was its emotional payoff.
Samurai Revolution is an exceptionally well crafted book that makes reading history a pleasure. Like each of Hillsborough's books this one makes me eager to read his next
However, Samurai Revolution, is his best work to date and easily my favorite.
Very few writers are able to adequately present Japanese history without either overly romanticizing it or piling on the inevitable cultural judgements of an outsider.
Hillsborough's work does neither. It is honest and bears the stamp of authority. While he clearly comes to the material with genuine appreciation and affection for the men who made these events happen, he does not whitewash or overly glorify them. If anything, he presents men like Katsu Kaishū and Tokugawa Yoshinobu as genuine human beings - warts and all. I especially appreciated the passage near the end of the book in which he details Yoshinobu's reaction to Kaish'ū's final act of loyalty. Like all books this one was a journey and for me that moment was its emotional payoff.
Samurai Revolution is an exceptionally well crafted book that makes reading history a pleasure. Like each of Hillsborough's books this one makes me eager to read his next
November 16, 2016
I have always been fascinated by story of samurais since I was little, and this book perfectedly captured my interests. Set through the twilight of Tokugawa Shogunate to the dawn of Imperial Rule, Japan became embroiled in a big turmoil. Big name such as Saigo Takamori, Ryoma Sakamoto, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, Shonan Yokoi and many others rose and fell. At the center of the story was Katsu Kaishu, a lowly commoner, an outsider, who served in the house of Tokugawa, throughout his life, his mind never strayed from how can he strengthen the Tokugawa against many adversaries, both internal such as the fickle, narrow-minded advisors to Shogun, and also external, manifested in domain lords, hell-bent on ending the domination of the Tokugawa. Even when the tide of history went against the Tokugawa and the fall was inevitable, Kaishu's mind focused on how to ensure the survival of the house which he served. And for that, he is worthy of the title: "the Shogun's Last Samurai".
P.S.: An extra lesson learnt from this book: if you don't like a public policy, just ambush and attack the ones who is responsible behind it, usually when they are going to or home from their workplace.
P.S.: An extra lesson learnt from this book: if you don't like a public policy, just ambush and attack the ones who is responsible behind it, usually when they are going to or home from their workplace.
December 4, 2021
Настільки детально, глубоко та цікаво це все описано, відчуття, ніби життя прожив поки читав. Дуже багато передумов, подій та людей. Автор знайомить з головними діячами з максимально далекого минулого, що дає можливість повністю уявити не тільки події, але й емоції чи причини, які спонукали до дій.
Я досі не мав уявлення, через що має пройти держава (та й люди), щоб змінити лад, уникнути зайвого кровопролиття, війн. На скільки важливо мати здібних людей, які зможуть взяти увесь тягар відповідальності на себе. І на скільки це небезпечно для них (не порахувати скільки людей було вбито через політичні рішення чи погляди в цій книзі).
Я в захопленні від автора. Надіюсь в нас з‘являться ще його історичні праці, яких в нього немало 🙂
Я досі не мав уявлення, через що має пройти держава (та й люди), щоб змінити лад, уникнути зайвого кровопролиття, війн. На скільки важливо мати здібних людей, які зможуть взяти увесь тягар відповідальності на себе. І на скільки це небезпечно для них (не порахувати скільки людей було вбито через політичні рішення чи погляди в цій книзі).
Я в захопленні від автора. Надіюсь в нас з‘являться ще його історичні праці, яких в нього немало 🙂
December 21, 2019
Good:
* Easy to understand: considering the complexity of the subject matter, this is a great accomplishment.
* The number of intrigues, plans and counter plots put most novels to shame.
Bad:
* Uses Japanese dates.
* Way too many personages: it makes War and Peace's list of characters seems so short.
* Easy to understand: considering the complexity of the subject matter, this is a great accomplishment.
* The number of intrigues, plans and counter plots put most novels to shame.
Bad:
* Uses Japanese dates.
* Way too many personages: it makes War and Peace's list of characters seems so short.
June 3, 2019
Very detailed book about the run-up to the end of the Bakufu regime, the Meiji Restoration and it's aftermath. The author provided a lot of details as the book advances following the life of Katsu Kaishu. Essential book of Japanese History in English
September 17, 2020
The words flow so easily, it’s like watching an epic film about the final years of the Shogunate .
I’d recommend reading some of the authors earlier works first to get primed for this .
I’d recommend reading some of the authors earlier works first to get primed for this .
January 23, 2024
As someone unfamiliar with Japanese history, this was not the best book for me. I needed a chronological overview written for non-natives or at most, a Japanese high school level version. To be fair, the book is exactly what the title indicates: an expansion of Katsu Kaishu’s memoirs. Hoo boy, I really struggled with the granularity in the first 300+ pages. I constantly flipped back and forth to the glossary of significantly historical people, but the glossary was way too short for my meager knowledge. Also, the dates mostly written in the Japanese format were especially difficult. The second half of the book was much better. Either the post-Shogunate events in Part II were more interesting or the information carried over from Part I finally started to gel in my mind. What I came away with was an appreciation of just how chaotic and violent the transition was over the course of 30 years. Also, how close the country came to an even longer, uglier civil war if not for a handful of progressive and farsighted people.
July 3, 2023
When I first learned about the Meiji revolution I think my textbook summed it up as ‘Satsuma and Choshu attacked the Tokugawa Shogun and succeeded in toppling their rule. Then the Meiji government was established and the government started seriously modernizing Japan.’ I’m paraphrasing but that was the gist of the story. I had no idea what actually happened. I didn’t know what Sakamoto Ryoma did; Katsu Kaishu and Saigō Takamori didn’t even exist for me. This book opened up an interesting history that ‘The Last Samurai’ only touched upon. I’d like to know more about these people and how they shaped the world away from the Euro-centric history that is taught in schools.
July 25, 2023
A very thorough history of Japanese history in the mid to late 19th century. From the perspective of Katsu Kaishu the author tells the story of how two and a half centuries of Tokugawa rule came to an end and set up the rise of the Japanese Empire in the early 20th century.
As someone unfamiliar with Japanese history and culture it was quite difficult for me to keep all the names of people and places straight. But overall the pivotal figures and events were highlighted enough that it wasn't too difficult to remember the big names. Overall a very eye opening take on Japanese history with an emphasized importance on the increasingly interconnected world that was emerging at the time.
As someone unfamiliar with Japanese history and culture it was quite difficult for me to keep all the names of people and places straight. But overall the pivotal figures and events were highlighted enough that it wasn't too difficult to remember the big names. Overall a very eye opening take on Japanese history with an emphasized importance on the increasingly interconnected world that was emerging at the time.
February 27, 2024
Great book(s), highly recommend to anyone who is remotely interested in learning Japanese history. The book takes you through the end of the feudal samurai caste system (the last shogun) and the drama saga that led to the Meiji Restoration and eventually the Japanese parliamentary government. Having known nothing about Japanese history prior to reading, the number of names early in the book without context made it difficult to discern the importance attributed to each person. A quick review of some of the major names associated with the Meiji Restoration would be helpful to any reader with 0 knowledge on Japanese history. Katsu Kaishu and Saigo Takamori, two names to remember.
August 7, 2022
Fascinating, the 19th century had the French revolution, the American civil war, the Japanese revolution and ended with the dawning era of the Russian revolution. This book details the turmoil as Japan shrugs off its feudal society.
September 18, 2018
I was too ambitious. This is too heavy for someone who is not v familiar with 19th C Japan. I am somewhat familiar but it was a lot.
December 6, 2020
A panorama of the changes wrought at the end of the Tokugawa era, but some familiarity with Japanese history is essential, and even then it's hard to keep all the names straight.
July 11, 2022
Interesting material dryly written
May 27, 2024
Damn! Read like a Shakespearean tragedy 🥲
January 2, 2026
A solid history of an under-discussed time period in English-language sources. It can be hard to follow because of the complexity of Japanese politics at the time though.
June 20, 2022
I didn't know shit about the Meiji Restoration before reading this, and now I kind of do.
My main take away is history could have been inextricably altered by various testicle related incidents and ailments.
pretty good book
My main take away is history could have been inextricably altered by various testicle related incidents and ailments.
pretty good book
Read
February 2, 2016a very thorough-full depict of Pre Meiji Japan period critical moment that led japan escaped similar doomed fated like China and rest of Asia mighty so called kingdom from European thug policy.
I did underestimated these books since I bought it from sale in online shop
I did underestimated these books since I bought it from sale in online shop
November 23, 2016
Mostly about Katsu Kaishuu, man of the old principle to the last, with a splash of Saigo, Okubo, and the rest. Easy to follow read to kill time, as always with Hillsborough's books, but that's it. Makes me want to read Katsu's journals now.
September 15, 2025
迷人的封建结构啊
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