Sakamoto Ryōma and the End of the Samurai Age: The Runaway Swordsman Behind the Satchō Alliance

Sakamoto Ryōma helped bring about the Meiji Restoration in three main ways: he took part in negotiating the secret 1866 Satchō Alliance between the rival Satsuma and Chōshū domains, he played a key role in the talks that led the last shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, to resign in 1867, and he sketched a plan for a modern Japanese state with an elected parliament and a constitution. He did not live to see the new Japan. Sakamoto Ryōma (1836–1867) was a low-ranking samurai from the Tosa Domain on the island of Shikoku, and he was assassinated in Kyoto in December 1867 together with his companion Nakaoka Shintarō, shortly before the Boshin War and the Restoration itself. Today he is one of the most romanticised figures in Japanese history, which makes it all the more interesting to separate the man from the legend.

A low-ranking samurai from Tosa

Ryōma was born on 3 January 1836 in Kōchi, in the Tosa Domain, today's Kōchi Prefecture. His family held the rank of gōshi, or country samurai, the lowest level of the samurai class. Earlier generations had bought that status with money made as sake brewers. In Tosa the line between high-ranking and low-ranking samurai was strictly enforced: they were treated unequally and even lived in separate districts. A young man who grew up on the wrong side of that line had good reason to question the old order.

He was not a promising student. He was enrolled in a private school at twelve but showed little interest in books, and after he was bullied, his older sister signed him up for fencing lessons at fourteen. The sword suited him. By adulthood he was, by all accounts, a master swordsman.

Sword training in Edo, and the black ships

In 1853 his domain allowed him to travel to Edo, the shogun's capital, to train at the famous Chiba dōjō of the Hokushin Ittō-ryū school. He earned a certificate of mastery and later taught there. The same year, Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States arrived with his fleet to force Japan to end its centuries-old policy of isolation. In 1854 the shogunate signed the Convention of Kanagawa, which many Japanese saw as an unequal treaty and a sign of weakness.

That moment changed everything for Ryōma's generation. The shogun's prestige was badly damaged, and many samurai, Ryōma among them, began to argue that power should go back to the emperor's court in Kyoto. A young swordsman who had come to Edo to polish his technique found himself in the middle of a political earthquake.

Running away from his domain

Back in Tosa, Ryōma joined the loyalist movement whose slogan was "Revere the Emperor, Expel the Barbarians". His friend Takechi Hanpeita founded a Tosa loyalist party in 1862, but the two men disagreed: Ryōma believed the movement should work for all of Japan, while Takechi focused on revolution within Tosa. Ryōma decided to leave the domain without permission. At the time this act, called dappan, could be punished by death.

As a masterless samurai, a rōnin, he worked against the shogunate under the alias Saitani Umetarō and was often hunted by its supporters, including the Shinsengumi police force in Kyoto.

The man he planned to kill

One of the most famous episodes in Ryōma's life is his meeting with Katsu Kaishū, a senior shogunate official who supported modernisation and Western learning. According to the story, Ryōma set out to assassinate him. Instead, Katsu persuaded him that Japan needed a long-term plan to build up its military strength in the face of Western power, and Ryōma became his assistant and protégé.

It is a perfect turning point for a drama, and it helps explain Ryōma's later thinking. He was not simply against the West. He wanted Japan to learn from it fast enough to stay independent. With the help of Satsuma, he set up a private navy and trading company in Nagasaki, the Kameyama Shachū, which later became the Kaientai.

The Satchō Alliance: what really happened

Satsuma and Chōshū were two of the strongest domains in western Japan, and for years they had been fierce enemies. Chōshū badly needed modern weapons but had few contacts with Western powers, while Satsuma had a substantial arms trade with Britain through the Scottish merchant Thomas Glover. At Ryōma's suggestion, Satsuma's Saigō Takamori helped arrange for Chōshū to receive the weapons it needed. Through the mediation of Nakaoka Shintarō, leaders of the two domains, Saigō Takamori and Ōkubo Toshimichi of Satsuma and Katsura Kogorō of Chōshū, were brought together.

In 1866 the two domains formed their secret alliance. Popular culture often presents Ryōma as the single genius who made it happen. Historians are more careful: his role as a neutral outsider was less important than many people believe, and the critical role in the negotiations was played by Komatsu Tatewaki of Satsuma. Ryōma was one important player among several, not the only hero.

The alliance mattered enormously. It helped Chōshū survive a punitive expedition by the shogunate in the summer of 1866, which ended in a stunning defeat for the Tokugawa armies, and in the Boshin War of 1868–1869 the imperial armies were made up mainly of samurai from Satsuma and Chōshū. Men from these two domains went on to dominate the Meiji government into the twentieth century.

The Teradaya attack and the revolver

In March 1866 shogunate agents tried to kill Ryōma at the Teradaya inn in Kyoto. Two details of that night became famous. His future wife, Narasaki Ryō, known as Oryō, was taking a bath when she noticed the attackers and ran upstairs to warn him, and Ryōma fought them off with a Smith and Wesson revolver. A samurai who escapes with a Western pistol is a neat symbol of the age, and his liking for samurai dress combined with Western shoes is often mentioned for the same reason.

Eight proposals on a ship

Once Chōshū had defeated the shogunate's army, Tosa wanted Ryōma back. The domain hoped for a negotiated settlement between the shogun and the emperor, one that would stop Satsuma and Chōshū from overthrowing the Tokugawa by force. Ryōma again played a crucial role in the talks that led to Tokugawa Yoshinobu's voluntary resignation in 1867.

In 1867, on board a Tosa ship near Nagasaki, he wrote the "Eight Proposals While Shipboard" in discussion with Gotō Shōjirō. The plan called for an elected two-chamber legislature, a constitution, a national army and navy, and regulation of gold and silver exchange rates. These ideas are thought to have formed the basis of the parliamentary system Japan introduced after his death.

Murder at the Ōmiya inn

On 10 December 1867 Ryōma was assassinated at the Ōmiya inn in Kyoto, at the age of 31. The killers struck down his bodyguard at the door, rushed upstairs, and attacked Ryōma and Nakaoka Shintarō in a dark, chaotic fight. Ryōma died that night, and Nakaoka two days later. By the traditional lunar calendar, he was killed on his own birthday.

Who did it? At first the Shinsengumi were blamed, and their leader Kondō Isami was later executed on that charge. In 1870, however, members of another pro-shogunate group, the Mimawarigumi, confessed. Even so, the identity of the real assassin has never been proven. The unsolved mystery is one reason the story still fascinates people.

Legacy and popular culture

Ryōma has been heavily featured and romanticised in Japanese popular culture. A 2010 newspaper article counted at least seven television dramas, six novels, seven manga and five films inspired by him. He was the hero of the NHK historical drama Ryōmaden, appears in the TV series Jin, inspired the character Sakamoto Tatsuma in Gintama, and is the main character of the video game Like a Dragon: Ishin!. In 2003 Kōchi Airport was renamed Kōchi Ryōma Airport, and a museum south of Kōchi has a large bronze statue of him looking out to sea.

Why is he so loved? The actor Masaharu Fukuyama, who played him on NHK, said that Ryōma is the kind of person onto whom anyone can project themselves. A low-ranking outsider who left home, changed his mind, made unlikely friends and died young before seeing his dream come true: it is a story that almost anyone can recognise a little of themselves in.

Learn with Sakamoto Ryōma: English phrases

Phrase	Meaning	Example
to bury the hatchet	to end an old conflict	Satsuma and Chōshū buried the hatchet.
to broker a deal	to arrange an agreement between others	Ryōma helped broker a deal for weapons.
a change of heart	a sudden change of opinion	After meeting Katsu, he had a change of heart.
ahead of his time	having ideas too modern for his era	His eight proposals were ahead of their time.
to strike out on your own	to leave and act independently	He struck out on his own and left Tosa.

Try this: Write three English sentences about someone who changed your mind, using "a change of heart" and "ahead of his/her time".