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Paper short abstract:

In 1883, Sakasaki Shiran wrote the first novel about Sakamoto Ryōma, investing this obscure bakumatsu reformer with the ideals of the early Meiji liberal movement. We will shed light on Sakasaki’s own career (his story), and on how his works (his stories) have influenced imageries of Meiji history.

Paper long abstract:

Marius Jansen’s “Sakamoto Ryōma and the Meiji Restoration” (1961) remains one of the most famous works on the life and accomplishments of Sakamoto Ryōma, by far the most iconic among the “men of purpose” of the bakumatsu period. Within Japan, Ryōma’s predominance in the imagery surrounding bakumatsu events can to a considerable extent be attributed to Shiba Ryōtarō’s successful serialized novel “Ryōma ga yuku,” written around the same time as Jansen’s work (1962-66). Generally, however, very little attention is given (Jansen fails to mention him completely) to the role played by Sakasaki Shiran (born Sakan, 1853-1913), whose own serialized novel of 1883 not only saved Ryōma from virtual oblivion, even in his native Kochi, but also made Ryōma available for future generations to adopt him and project their ideals on his persona. I will take a closer look at Sakasaki Shiran’s own life and thought, which was very much defined by his engagement as a journalist and activist in the Movement for Freedom and People’s Rights. His vicissitudinous career is characterized by a search for effective tools to propagate this thought, vying to introduce democratic reform and reach wide audiences. After a short career in the judiciary, he became a journalist, speech writer and satirical poet, ended up in prison, and then moved on to make fame as a translator of Victor Hugo and a writer of historical fiction (popularizing amongst others the story of the Tosa Loyalist Party). During the last years of his life, as his fiction made it into the common consciousness of late Meiji and early Taisho, he was invited into the Ishin shiryō hensankai, precursor of the present Shiryō hensanjo at Tokyo University. Shedding light on Sakasaki Shiran, we will get a better understanding of how the “birth” of Ryōma intertwines with Sakasaki’s own story (how, for instance, he invests Ryōma with his own jiyū minken ideals), and we can elucidate from a historical perspective some of the mechanisms operating under the surface of the ever popular bakumatsu ishin imagery.