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This memorial was signed by the Daimios of Kago, Hizen, Satsuma, Choshiu, Tosa, and some other Daimios of the west. But the real author of the memorial is believed to have been Kido, the brain of the Restoration. Thus were the fiefs of the most powerful and most wealthy Daimios voluntarily offered to the Emperor. The other Daimios soon followed the example of their colleagues.
It may well be imagined how indignantly this attitude of the neighbouring kingdom was resented by Japan. The prominent leaders of national reform at that time were Sanjo and Iwakura, originally Court nobles;* Saigo and Okubo, samurai of Satsuma, and Kido, a samurai of Choshu.
They accordingly "have had to cast away every tradition, every habit, and every principle and mode of action with which even the youngest of them had to begin official life." The ranks of this noble body of statesmen and reformers are now gradually diminishing. Saigo and Gesho are no more. Kido and Iwakura have been borne to their graves. Okubo and Mori have fallen under the sword of fanatics.
No, it was Bushido, pure and simple, that urged us on for weal or woe. Open the biographies of the makers of Modern Japan of Sakuma, of Saigo, of Okubo, of Kido, not to mention the reminiscences of living men such as Ito, Okuma, Itagaki, etc.: and you will find that it was under the impetus of samuraihood that they thought and wrought. When Mr.
Some of their disciples became men of will and action: Sakuma Shozan, Yoshida Toraziro, Gesho, Yokoi Heishiro, and later Saigo, Okubo, Kido, and hosts of others, who ultimately realized the dreams of their masters. Out of the literary seed which scholars like Rai Sanyo spread broadcast over the country thus grew hands of iron and hearts of steel.
Alike in Satsuma and in Choshu, there were a number of clever men who had long laboured to combine the forces of the two fiefs in order to unite the whole empire under the sway of the Kyoto Court. Saigo and Okubo on the Satsuma side, Kido and Sanjo on the Choshu became leading figures on the stage of their country's new career.
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