Heroes who Saved Tokyo from Civil War
Tokyo was half destroyed twice in the past.
In September 1923, the Great Kantō earthquake destroyed 381,000 houses and killed about 100,000 residents in and around Tokyo, while forcing 1.9 million people to suffer any damage or evacuate.
In March 1945, the US Air Forces sent 470 B29 bombers to Tokyo. They destroyed 270,000 houses and buildings and killed 80,000 citizens and wounded 41,000 residents. The total number of afflicted people were 1.1 million.
However, in the samurai era when Tokyo was called Edo, a big earthquake occurred around Tokyo killing more than 10,000 people in 1855, and a big fire was set off in 1657 killing more than 100,000 Edo residents and in 1772 killing more than 15,000.
But in the civil war that put an end to the last samurai regime in Edo in 1868, the whole city of Edo was at risk for becoming a fierce battle field. At the time, the Tokugawa shogun, Tokugawa Yoshinobu, already lost his will to fight, though the capital Edo of the Tokugawa samurai government was still defended by thousands of samurai troops subject to the shogun.
Besides about 1.5 million residents lived in Edo. If more than 10,000 anti-Tokugawa samurai troops, equipped with advanced rifles and cannons imported from the UK and France and led by a powerful samurai leader Saigo Takamori (1828-1877), had been determined to take over power from the Tokugawa clan by force, Tokugawa samurais deployed around the Edo Castle should have set a fire to Edo streets and fought to their last breath, sacrificing so many citizens.
However, both the sides entered the last minute negotiations to allow Tokugawa camps to surrender without battles and abandon the Edo Castle to the revolutionary troops tied up with the imperial authority. Leaders of the imperial samurais promised not to punish or execute Tokugawa Yoshinobu and his subordinate samurai warriors. In this way, Edo could escape the war damage.
And this critical negotiation was conducted by Saigo Takamaori, a top military leader of the anti-Tokugawa camp, and Katsu Kaisyu, one of top samurai ministers of the feudal Tokugawa regime.
This is one of the most well-known event in the modern Japanese history. Both Saigo and Katsu are regarded as great heroes in the Meiji Restoration. However, Saigo was originally a lower-class of samurai of the Shimazu Clan in Satsuma (presently Kagoshima Prefecture, the most southwest region of Japan); Katsu was a self-made samurai bureaucrat in the Edo government. If the era had been peaceful and normal, they must not have become such historical characters. But Saigo Takamori acted as the representative of the Emperor and the coalition of anti-Tokugawa imperial samurais, and Katsu Kaisyu represented the Tokugawa shogun (the king of samurais) to save Edo, later called Tokyo, from tragedy of the civil war in 1868, though some fierce battles continued between samurais on the Tokugawa side and imperial samurais in the regions north of Tokyo for months.
As I mentioned Saigo Takamori yesterday, it would be appropriate to take a look at a brief description about Katsu Kaisyu in a common source of information.
Count Katsu Kaishū (1823 – 1899) was a Japanese statesman, naval engineer during the Late Tokugawa shogunate and early Meiji period.[1]
Katsu was born in Edo (present day Tokyo) to a low-ranking retainer of the Tokugawa Shogun.
As a youth Katsu Kaishu, whose given name was Katsu Rintaro (Kaishu was pseudonym), studied Dutch and European military science, and was eventually appointed translator by the government when European powers attempted to open contact with Japan. Katsu developed the reputation as an expert in western military technology.
In 1860, Katsu served as captain of the warship Kanrin-maru, (with assistance from US naval officer Lt. John M. Brooke), to escort the first Japanese delegation to San Francisco, California en route to Washington, DC for the formal ratification of the Harris Treaty. The Kanrin Maru, built by the Dutch, was the first Japanese vessel to sail to the Western world. Kaishū remained in San Francisco for nearly two months, observing American society, culture and technology.
In 1866, Katsu was appointed negotiator between the bakufu forces and the anti-shogunal domain of Chōshū, and later served as chief negotiator for the Tokugawa bakufu, ensuring a relatively peaceful and orderly transition of power in the Meiji Restoration.It is a little ironical that Saigo Takamori died in the civil war in 1877, a war Saigo launched to help disenchanted ex-samurais neglected by the Meiji Government, while Katsu Kaisyu was respected by leaders of the new imperial government and asked to work for them as a member of the imperial Cabinet to live till 1899.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katsu_Kaish%C5%AB
In this way Tokyo has never been a battle field in Japanese civil wars in history owing to the two heroes of Saigo and Katsu, which is a very important historical fact for Japanese of even today.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katsu_Kaish%C5%AB
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Mat 7:8 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.