The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori [Hardcover]

Mark Ravina (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 24, 2003

The dramatic arc of Saigo Takamori's life, from his humble origins as a lowly samurai, to national leadership, to his death as a rebel leader, has captivated generations of Japanese readers and now Americans as well - his life is the inspiration for a major Hollywood film, The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise and Ken Watanabe. In this vibrant new biography, Mark Ravina, professor of history and Director of East Asian Studies at Emory University, explores the facts behind Hollywood storytelling and Japanese legends, and explains the passion and poignancy of Saigo's life. Known both for his scholarly research and his appearances on The History Channel, Ravina recreates the world in which Saigo lived and died, the last days of the samurai.

The Last Samurai traces Saigo's life from his early days as a tax clerk in far southwestern Japan, through his rise to national prominence as a fierce imperial loyalist. Saigo was twice exiled for his political activities -- sent to Japan's remote southwestern islands where he fully expected to die. But exile only increased his reputation for loyalty, and in 1864 he was brought back to the capital to help his lord fight for the restoration of the emperor. In 1868, Saigo commanded his lord's forces in the battles which toppled the shogunate and he became and leader in the emperor Meiji's new government. But Saigo found only anguish in national leadership. He understood the need for a modern conscript army but longed for the days of the traditional warrior.

Saigo hoped to die in service to the emperor. In 1873, he sought appointment as envoy to Korea, where he planned to demand that the Korean king show deference to the Japanese emperor, drawing his sword, if necessary, top defend imperial honor. Denied this chance to show his courage and loyalty, he retreated to his homeland and spent his last years as a schoolteacher, training samurai boys in frugality, honesty, and courage. In 1876, when the government stripped samurai of their swords, Saigo's followers rose in rebellion and Saigo became their reluctant leader. His insurrection became the bloodiest war Japan had seen in centuries, killing over 12,000 men on both sides and nearly bankrupting the new imperial government. The imperial government denounced Saigo as a rebel and a traitor, but their propaganda could not overcome his fame and in 1889, twelve years after his death, the government relented, pardoned Saigo of all crimes, and posthumously restored him to imperial court rank.

In THE LAST SAMURAI, Saigo is as compelling a character as Robert E. Lee was to Americans-a great and noble warrior who followed the dictates of honor and loyalty, even though it meant civil war in a country to which he'd devoted his life. Saigo's life is a fascinating look into Japanese feudal society and a history of a country as it struggled between its long traditions and the dictates of a modern future.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Within the complicated chronology of the Tokugawa shogunate's fall and succession by a modernizing monarchy, the so-called Satsuma Rebellion of 1877 is clearly the definitive last stand of Japanese feudalism. For that reason, the life of Saigo Takamori, who headed that rebellion, has acquired a romantic aura that doesn't strictly withstand Ravina's historical scrutiny; nevertheless, what survives the author's inspection contributes to an interesting portrait of a samurai in interesting times. Saigo rose from the bottom tiers of the warrior class, eventually leading the armies supporting the emperor against those of the shogun. His ascent was hardly smooth, though, entailing two exiles, a suicide pact that he survived, and three marriages. Ravina recounts the tumults that resulted in Saigo's acquiescence in revolt, capturing the protagonist's struggle with loyalty and showing American readers the quality of enigmatic nobility that makes Saigo a well-known historical figure in Japan. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

“Ravina’s portrait of Saigo is well drawn and sympathetic…” (Asian Affairs, November 2004)

"...Reads like a thriller..." (Good Book Guide, February 2004)

"...Ravina's writing grips with the intensity of a great adventure story and vividly portrays the upheavals caused to a nation..." (Yorkshire Evening Post, 24 January 2004)

"...a pacy narrative that reads like a thriller, complemented by maps and photographs..." (The Good Book Guide, January 2004)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (November 24, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0471089702
• ISBN-13: 978-0471089704
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #597,696 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Real Story of the Last Samurai, December 21, 2003

By 

Nick Jamilla "Sit anima tecum" (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori (Hardcover)

Ravina's The Last Samurai is an excellent study high on specifics in an academic subject which is often superficial and generalized. It's not a book about generals, tactics, and weapons, but a look at an idealistic and passionate man who also happened to be a samurai.

Casual readers should know right from the start that this book is an academic text with extensive annotations and a large bibliography. It is not a difficult book to read, but a fuller knowledge of Japanese history would give the book a richer historical context in which Saigo Takamori lived. With that said, I only wish Ravina had included a substantive biographical glossary of the people with whom Saigo lived and communicated. The importance of people like Okubo, Kido, and Itagaki are far understated in the text. A minor peeve are the date notations which can be confusing at times, but it reflects Ravina's conscious decision to put accuracy at the forefront of his research. Historical method is certainly the defining characteristic which makes The Last Samurai a definitive text in English (as well as in Japanese, when and if it ever gets translated).

One would have wished for a more complete examination of the alleged assassination attempt on Saigo's life for it is offered as a critical pretext for his revolt against the Meiji government. If the conspiracy to take his life were conclusively true, then Saigo could be seen as reacting in self-defense to preserve not only the independence of the Satsuma fief, but also his personal honor. If untrue, Saigo could just as easily be accused of supporting an opportunistic rebellion.

But in a book about as romanticized a figure as Saigo Takamori is in Japanese culture, my biggest worry from the onset was that Ravina would have been just as drawn as past biographers to perpetuate the standard myths about Takamori's life. But Ravina challenges the legend and brings Takamori down from the heavens and places him profanely on the battlefield where he perishes in ignominious defeat. Like Matsumoto from Zwick's film (same name, but not based on Ravina's book), much is made of Takamori's pull between tradition and modernity. Ravina's book is encouraging in that the author is not afraid to tell us what we, as a sympathetic reader, would be afraid to hear. What that is can be found quite appropriately in the book's last paragraph.

For those who have seen The Last Samurai (the movie) but want to know the REAL story of the last samurai, read this book.

Nick Jamilla, author of Shimmering Sword: Samurai, Western, and Star Wars Sword Fighting.

32 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Paradoxical Life of a Paragon of Virtue, June 28, 2004

By 

George R Dekle "Bob Dekle" (Lake City, FL United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori (Hardcover)

The Tom Cruise movie, "The Last Samurai" depicts Saigo Takamori as a reactionary who rejected everything Western and died valiantly waving a samurai sword as he rode into the murderous fire of gatling guns. Well, he did die valiantly (or quixotically) as a medieval samurai charging on horseback into gunfire, but he wasn't a reactionary. He was a little bit more complicated than that.

Instead of being the movie's staunch defender of the status quo, Takamori was instrumental in dismantling Japanese feudalism and bringing Japan into the 19th Century. He embraced Western technology and admired some aspects of Western government. Fierce in battle, compassionate in victory, loyal to a fault, tortured by his perception of himself as a failure, eager to embrace death before dishonor, this was a man who commanded such respect that he endangered the Meijin government by simply refusing to participate in it.

How could one of the greatest supporters of the Meijin emperor rebel against his sovereign? How could one of the main architects of the moderinzation of Japan wind up charging on horseback into the murderous gunfire of the modern Japanese army? How could he in death be transformed into a hero of mythic proportions? Read the book and find out.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Conflicted hero that endures today, October 20, 2004

By 

C. Middleton (Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Last Samurai: The Life and Battles of Saigo Takamori (Hardcover)

"Where is Saigo Takamori's head?"

Thus begins Mark Ravina's intriguing and amazingly detailed historical narrative of Japan's enduring hero of its traditional cultural ways, the way of the Samurai. As Ravina ponders, why did finding Takamori's head matter: because it represented one of the oldest traditions of the warrior class. At the final battle between the rebel forces against the Meiji state on the morning of September 24, 1877, in which the rebel forces were defeated, by presenting the severed head of this legendary defeated warrior, it displayed honour, and offering the head to the lord as tribute, this showed great respect for the Samurai class as a whole. (This was a contradiction, as the Meniji state had been suppressing the Samurai tradition for some time) It was highly symbolic that Takamori's head could not be found, which the author exams with great erudition and depth.

Saigo Takamori continues to be revered in Japan because he has come to represent the true Japan, medieval Japan, before the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate and the rise of the Meiji state, which ironically, Saigo Takamori played a major role that contributed to their rise and fall, respectively. Takamori was at once a great traditionalist and reformer. He practiced the old ways and believed passionately in the basic virtues of the Samurai, though at the same time realised the great need for his country to reform. In the end, he knew that Japan had to retain its cultural heritage, all that was good and positive, but he also realized the need to move with the west. He believed the west was advanced in many ways, politically, yet cultural anomalies such as ballroom dancing, he utterly appalled. In effect, he desired everything good from both cultures.

In fact this entire story is a paradox. It is because the desire for reform and the desire to retain the traditional are equal in importance and strength. Interestingly, after Saigo's death, a slogan appeared in the popular press at the time: "Shinsei kotoku" (A New Government, Rich and Value), in other words, a new governing body that retains traditional values. As the author points out -

"...it looks forward to a new government but harkens back to the notion that the state should be benevolent rather than bureaucratic. Implicit in the slogan was the contradictory but compelling desire for the vitality of a free society combined with the security of a Confucian patriarchy." (P.206)

The last Samurai, Sagio Takamori, is a mixture of legend and historical fact. Japan has created him as a symbol of modern Japan, that contradiction of modernity and deep-seated tradition that endures today. This is an excellent work on a fascinating individual.

Highly recommended.