Orbach leverages his European perspective to analyze Japan’s “supreme prerogative,” a Meiji import from Prussia consisting of an army leadership triumvirate: the chief of general staff, the army minister and the inspector general. Without arms, food or ammunition, the Meiji forces managed to overwhelm the rebels, and Saigo’s forces surrendered. Paradoxically, like the 1930s military rebels that were to come, Saigo saw himself as a loyal retainer of the Emperor, although he besieged the Meiji army garrison in Kumamoto Castle. To Orbach’s military eye, Saigo made many strategic mistakes that doomed his rebellion. Takasugi showed that a reckless, impromptu assault could yield victory, and this narrative formed the basis for a shishi ideology: purity of motive over clear strategy.ĭuring the 1870s, the most significant domestic rebellion against the new Meiji state came from Saigo Takamori, a disaffected general whose clan was based in southern Kyushu. In 1865, Shinsaku Takasugi, a Choshu clan (present-day Yamaguchi Prefecture) samurai, was celebrated as a shishi success story after he organized an improvised mixed force of samurai and peasants against a Choshu collaborationist government, defeating the shogunate forces.

Starting in the 1860s, Orbach examines the origins of shishi, “warriors of high aspirations.” Flourishing in kendo clubs and urban entertainment districts, the shishi occupied a space somewhere between the “old” samurai of the feudal Edo Period (1603-1868) and the “new” Meiji Era nationalists. All of this was despite the fact that, from the founding of the Meiji “national” armed forces, the Imperial Rescript mandated loyalty to the Japanese nation-state, with clear instruction not to “meddle in politics.” What’s more, Japan’s 1880s penal code called for severe punishment for any act of military disobedience - but apparently this did little to thwart rebellious activities.

Imperial japanese army ranks