Who Killed Sakamoto Ryoma?
Sakamoto Ryoma (the family name is Sakamoto) is respected by so many Japanese, especially ambitious politicians of today.
He played a decisive role when the last samurai regime fell and Imperial samurais established a new (Meiji) government that drove whole Japan to modernization and Westernization in late 1860's.
However Sakamoto Ryoma was assassinated in 1867 by officially unknown samurais in Kyoto.
The greatness of his contribution to the Meiji Restoration and this mysterious tragedy has made Ryoma one of the greatest heroes in the Japanese history.
Even today, books and TV programs on the subject of this last samurai hero are newly produced and delivered every year. On the Internet, Japanese are discussing Ryoma and his personal magentism in various sites. And, I found a very interesting blog run by a writer.
(http://blog.goo.ne.jp/kagamigawa/e/07de7628322fe6b4bf2e4fca68b93c28)
Sakamoto Ryoma appeared in a dream of Empress Meiji, namely a great-grandmother of His Majesty the Emperor, when the Japan-Russo War was fought between 1904 and 1905. Ryoma encouraged the anxious Empress, promising his heavenly support to the Empire and its Navy, though in her dream.
The eventual victory of the Empire of Japan over the Russian Empire was virtually decided in the Naval Battle of Tsushima, while Ryoma was well known for his pioneering adventure into overseas trade using modern steam ships. Empress Meiji was also known as a fan of the Imperial Navy. (Meiji Emperor liked the Imperial Army far better than the Imperial Navy.) The father of the wife of Ryoma had been put in a jail in Kyoto for a political reason by the Tokugawa samurai regime, and the father of Meiji Empress had had the same experience. When Ryoma was assassinated at the age 33, Meiji Empress was 17, the both living and acting around Kyoto.
So, though Sakamoto Ryoma was then known only mostly to elite samurais and activists as a unique independent samurai who could import thousands of modern rifles from England and act on an advanced political idea, there was no denying a possibility that Empress Meiji had some information about Ryoma who could even influence the fate of the Imperial family of the era.
And, when another big hero of the Meiji Restoration, Takamori Saigo (Saigo is the family name), tragically died fightinng against the Imperial troops in the last civil war in Japan in 1877, Emperor Meiji forgave Saigo, but Empress Meiji did not.
Saigo had been however virtually the top commander of Imperial samurais in the 1868 civil war against the Tokugawa samurai regime, but a decade after the establishment of the Imperial Meiji Government, he became the top leader of insurgent ex-samurais against the Tokyo Imperial Government. Saigo's forces were defeated after fierce battles, and Saigo himself honorably committed a harakiri suicide in his home land Kagoshima. Yet, as his personality was too great and his contribution to the Imperial Restoration was so greater, Emperor Meiji forgave him as the general public did. But, Empress Meiji did not.
The reason seems to be that Takamori Saigo was the very person who had ordered the assassination of the great swordman but also handgun armed Sakomoto Ryoma, his old friend but also a possible friend of the Tokugawa clan.
Sakamoto Ryoma must have been a great hero for Empress Meiji, too. And, the only reason why the Empress showed explicitly such a dislike for the very popular hero General Saigo her husband Meiji Emperor forgave despite the civil war seems to be that she believed that Army General Takamori Saigo was the very person who had ordered the assassination of Sakomoto Ryoma, using special samurai swordsmen of the Tokugawa camp as assassins in Kyoto in 1867 (which is of course a great conspiracy for all involved).
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This is what I was thinking of today (though I sometimes watched TV), as you must know.
(Any Japanese will respect you, a foreigner, if you have any knowledge of Sakamoto Ryoma or Takamori Saigo, though even not as power behind the assassination of Ryoma...)