Paper short abstract:

This paper reconsiders the historical legacy of Yoshida Shôin (1830-59), the controversial imperial loyalist and Chôshû domain samurai, primarily through an examination of the sites or realms of memory—e.g., the monuments, graves, statues, shrines—that comprise his memory landscape.

Paper long abstract:

Was he the "spiritual father" and a "martyred prophet" of the Meiji Restoration or a not-so-great xenophobic terrorist who failed in most everything he did during his short life? Opinion about Chôshû domain samurai Yoshida Shôin (1830-59) can be quite divided, but the former interpretation certainly has been dominant in historical and popular discourses since the late-nineteenth century. In fact, just a little more than two decades after the Restoration, Shôin's reputation had already crossed the sea, as immortalized in Robert Louis Stevenson's biographical collection of notable figures, Familiar Studies of Men and Books (1895). In Japan, Shôin's status was elevated by numerous Meiji-period figures such as Tokutomi Sohô and Inoue Tetsujirô, for whom he was a republican revolutionary and pivotal figure in the development of bushido ideology, respectively. However, his reputation in Japan was sealed largely through the efforts of the Meiji government—induction into Yasukuni Shrine (1888), the awarding of honorary court title (Senior Fourth Rank, 1889), the construction of statues of Yoshida and other forms of commemoration. Those efforts continued during the 1930s and first half of the 1940s, as Shôin the imperial loyalist was thrust into a prominent position in moral education and training, for soldiers and schoolchildren alike.

This paper reconsiders the historical legacy of Yoshida Shôin, primarily through an examination of the sites or realms of memory—monuments, graves, statues, shrines, and other historical sites—that comprise his memory landscape. It also considers commemorative activity such as tourist campaigns, visitation and pilgrimage to Shôin shrines in Tokyo and Hagi, as well as Shôin's treatment in popular culture, including film and textually mediated historical memory. In doing so, this paper aims to reassess Shôin's historical legacy as well as to examine the role of memory landscapes in the construction of historical memory.