Samurai

Samurai uses the life of Saigō Takamori to explain the destruction and reinvention of Japan’s warrior class. Born into the Satsuma domain, Saigō became a central figure in the movement that overthrew the Tokugawa shogunate and restored political authority in the name of Emperor Meiji. He then helped build the new government and its national army even as reform dismantled the hereditary privileges on which samurai identity had rested.

Saigō’s break with the Meiji leadership and his role in the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877 turned him into the most famous opponent of the state he had helped create. John Man follows the rebellion to its defeat and examines the gap between Saigō’s historical career and the romantic image of the ‘last samurai’, showing how loyalty, honour and resistance were recast for modern Japan and later global culture.