A Short Biography of  Katsura Kogoro / Kido Takayoshi (with my Commentary) (2024)

Typed up from Sidney Devere Brown’s introduction to The Diary of Kido Takayoshi: 1868-1871. pp. xvi-xxi.

Once upon a time, during my initial burst of Bakumatsu fannishness, I photocopied this short biography to type up later. Later has turned into four years later, and in the meantime, the book itself went missing from my university library. That was a bad day for me, discovering the book had vanished. The only thing that lifted my gloom was a friend pointing out that they were now the Runaway Katsura Diaries.

Some day, I’ll get the diaries on an inter-library loan. For now, here is the text with my commentary, explanations, and some fandom connections, particularly to Gintama and Rurouni Kenshin. With my commentary, it came to about seven pages in Word so If you’d like to read the text by itself, I’ve uploaded it here.

Kido was born in 1833 in Hagi castletown on the Sea of Japan in the tozama domain of Chōshū, the fief of the Mōri family who were hereditary enemies of the ruling Tokugawa shoguns.

In the Edo period, the tozama daimyo, literally “the outside lords” were the lords of houses whose ancestors were not vassals of Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1600. Not all the tozama lords were Ieyasu’s enemies. Some were allies. The Mōri, on the other hand, opposed Ieyasu in 1600, and were stripped of most of their territory in Western Japan. The domain fostered a long, bitter grudge against the Tokugawa. Despite these losses, Chōshū was still one of the larger domains.

His natural father, Wada Masakage, had the modest stipend of 20 koku as a han physician;

Koku was the measurement of rice used to define samurai stipends. It’s traditionally explained as the amount of rice to feed a person for a year. In practice, domains including Chōshū borrowed out of their samurai’s stipends to keep afloat, so many samurai got less than half of their official stipend. 20 is quite low, but as we’ll see, the Wada family had other income. The Wada family were also proud of their descent from Mōri Motonari, via his seventh son Motomasa.

Han means the domain of Chōshū. It’s a weird term, since it wasn’t really used much in the Edo period, but in the Meiji period became the favoured term for the domains. And there’s a political reason for that. But without getting into the political details, domain, han, clan, and kuni all mean the same thing in most popular accounts of the Bakumatsu. (If you do want the political details, I suggest reading About Some Japanese Historical Terms by Hiroshi Watanabe.)

but that he was affluent was suggested by the magnificence of the rambling two-storied mansion which was Kido’s birthplace.

See my photographs of the Wada house, which I took on a trip to Hagi.

The explanation of the doctor’s wealth may be found in the unusual arrangement of two front entrances, or genkan – one for warrior patients, the other for well-paying townsmen. Although Kido did not succeed to the headship of the family and was not the main heir, the wealthy doctor left his young son the substantial sum of ten kamme of silver.

Young Kogorō was his father’s first son, but the child of a second marriage. He had a much older half-sister whose husband was adopted as the Wada heir.

The elder Wada, whose reputation was great enough that he was invited to lecture on ophthalmology at the domain medical school, also bequeathed an interest in Dutch learning and things Western.

The higher-ranking Katsura family adopted Kido as an heir in 1840, when he was seven. The 150-koku Katsura stipend was reduced to 90 koku as a penalty for a deathbed adoption;

There’s a lot to unpack here. Edo period inheritance laws and traditions were crazily complicated. Particularly for samurai families, an ongoing concern was maintaining the family’s stipend, status, and privileges from one family head to another. If a man died without an official heir, the house died with him … at least in theory.

“Deathbed” adoptions were very common, and quite often, the adopter was unconscious or already dead when he “adopted” an heir. It was a polite fiction that allowed a samurai family to continue. The government could penalize the practice, as they did in the case of Katsura Kogorō’s adoption, but they were also complicit in it. Families often borrowed children from among their relatives, but also from colleagues and friends. I have no idea what the Wada-Katsura relationship was.

(Incidentally, in Gintama, something apparently went wrong with Katsura’s inheritance, and he’s stripped of most of his father’s property. There are no real details given.)

The Katsura clan had been very prominent retainers of the Mōri in the Sengoku. They were descended from a younger Mōri son who took the name Katsura in the 14th century. As you can see, men like Katsura Kogorō had a lot more ancestral pride than position.

but Kido was now a “real” samurai whose social position allowed him to enter the domain school, the Meirinkan, for an orthodox education in literature and the military arts.

My Meirinkan photos here.

In 1852 he left Chōshū for the first time to study swordsmanship in Edo with Saitō Yakurō, one of the three great swordsmasters of the capital. Out of the fencing academies came Emperor-loyalism and the Restoration. As head student at the Saitō Academy, Kido made contact with loyalists from all across Japan – Sakamoto Ryōma of Tosa, for example, who was a student at the nearby Chiba Academy.

Legend has it that he and Sakamoto had an exhibition match at this time, and Sakamoto won.

Service with Chōshū forces assigned to coastal defense against the American fleet of Commodore Matthew C. Perry in 1853-1854 stimulated Kido’s patriotism, as he viewed the menacing “black ships” with his own eyes.

In the diary, Katsura explains that he wasn’t allowed to enter the area to view the ships closely, so he disguised himself as the servant of a Bakufu official who agreed to take him with him. It was the beginning of a lifetime of disguises.

The crisis moved him to study coastal fortification and artillery with the Bakufu military reformer Egawa Tarōzaemon, to whom the swordmaster Saitō owed his allegiance. It was Saitō who made the arrangements. Kido also observed the Russians building a schooner at Shimoda, and arranged for Chōshū to construct its first Western-style vessel on a similar pattern in 1856, using some of the same workmen for the project.

The Russians actually showed up in Japan the same year as Perry, with some of the same objectives, but not nearly so much pushiness. Yet, Russia already had a difficult history with Japan. Russian expeditions had raided Japanese posts in the northern islands. During the Russian-Japanese negotiations at Shimoda, there was a big tsunami which destroyed the Russian ship. This led to Katsura’s opportunity to watch a Western ship being built by the Russian sailors and Japanese carpenters.

Like his mentor, Yoshida Shōin, Kido held an ambivalent view of the West. His fear was mixed with admiration; and he hoped for emancipation of Japan by imitation of Western military skills. Yoshida shaped not only Kido’s military ideas but his social and political thought as well. Kido, indeed, is regarded as one of the great students to come out of Yoshida’s private academy, the Shōka Sonjuku, although he could have studied there only briefly.

Katsura was only three years younger than Yoshida, and although he definitely hung out at the Shōka Sonjuku, he wasn’t a student in the way the younger Takasugi was.

Shōin’s loyalist thought carried with it a concept of social revolution. He preached the necessity for a grass-roots hero to arise to install a merit bureaucracy, to create an egalitarian army, and to send talented students abroad to study. It was an anti-feudal program which Kido ultimately carried out,

Brown’s conclusions about Yoshida’s influence on Kido - like any writing about Yoshida Shōin’s legacy - are controversial. But this is definitely the popular legacy that carries over into stories like Gintama.

but in Shōin’s lifetime Kido was more cautious than his teacher, and tried to protect the impassioned reformer from the wrath of the Bakufu by screening out his more intemperate letters. Although he preferred a more moderate course himself, Kido mourned the death of Shōin at the hands of the Bakufu’s executioners in 1859, and saw to it that the Chōshū ideologue was reburied with honor at Wakabayashi in Edo.

These details are covered in this entry from Katsura’s diary: Katsura Kogoro (Kido Takayoshi)’s reflections on Yoshida Shoin.

A Chōshū reformer who paved the way for the Sufu Masanosuke faction (which provided Kido’s initial appointment to domain office in 1858 and which projected Chōshū into national politics) was Murata Seifū. That Kido did not forget his debt to Murata is evident in the early pages of the diary in 1868, when, as a national statesman home on leave, Kido did the calligraphy for an appreciation of Murata to be cut in stone and placed at the base of the late domain leader’s favorite pine tree in Hagi [22 June 1868].

In 1862 Kido joined the inner circle of Chōshū officials who guided the domain to the loyalist-exclusionist policy favored by the radical lower samurai, and away from the pro-Bakufu, open-country stance of Nagai Uta, whose power derived from upper feudal groups. Huber designates 200 koku of income as the dividing line between the factions.

Huber is Thomas Huber who wrote the book, The Revolutionary Origins of Modern Japan. Huber’s political analysis has also been viciously fought over highly debated.

Kido served in Kyoto, primarily as Chōshū’s chief diplomat for negotiations with the Imperial Court and the other domains. In 1863, when he was the ranking Chōshū official in the Imperial city, Kido fell under a cloud for failing to detect the Satsuma-Aizu coup which drove the Chōshū military forces out of town.

This incident is seen from the Shinsengumi’s point of view in Hakuouki Reimeroku. Prior to the Aizu-Satsuma coalition, Chōshū had a strong influence over the Imperial Court. The coalition expelled the Chōshū friendly nobles in the Court, along with the Chōshū troops.

Chōshū’s military forces retreated out of Kyoto without fighting back. I’ve noticed that this next period confuses a lot of fans. It’s important to remember that Chōshū soldiers are banned from Kyoto, and the Chōshū ronin were technically supposed to be back in their own domain, anyway, but Chōshū officials like Katsura continued to live and work in Kyoto. Despite the climate of violence and suspicion, no one was actually at war with anyone else. The Chōshū compound was a diplomatically inviolable base.

The next year, in the Ikedaya Affair, the Shinsengumi cornered, killed or captured some Chōshū plotters and their allies in an inn, the Ikedaya. Brown doesn’t mention it but Katsura nearly avoided being caught at the Ikedaya. He’d either left the inn earlier (Katsura’s version) or climbed out the window of the upper floor of the Ikedaya and escaped over the roofs (a persistent rumour that has become a cornerstone of his popular portrayals, including Gintama).

The next month after the Ikedaya:

Again, Kido was on duty in Kyoto when the disastrous, suicidal push of the Chōshū forces to capture the Emperor failed at Hamaguri Gate on 20 August 1864, but he was absent from the field of battle.

The event otherwise known as the Kinmon no Hen or in English, “The Forbidden Gate Incident.” (In Rurouni Kenshin, this is when Kenshin and Tomoe go out to the countryside at Katsura’s orders.)

The story of Kido’s escape from the city after the 1864 debacle is a romantic one. While he hid under Nijō Bridge along the Kamo River, posing as a beggar, his geisha lover Ikumatsu brought him riceballs from the shop of Imai Tarōemon, the official Chōshū merchant. She aided in his escape after five days, and in 1868, following her adoption into a samurai family, became Kido’s wife Matsuko, referred to simply as Matsu in the diary.

(Thus explaining why Katsura in Gintama names all the heroines “Matsuko” in his weird stories.)

Formal adoptions to facilitate a marriage were pretty common in the period, and don’t mean the family actually took in the adoptee for more than a couple days. Ikumatsu’s status had to be brought up to Katsura’s to allow a marriage.

Kido fled to remote Izushi in Tajima province, northwest of Kyoto, pretending that he belonged to a branch family of the local shopkeeper Hirado Jinsuke. For more than half a year, his whereabouts unknown even to Chōshū loyalists, Kido tended to a shop under the pseudonym Hiroe Kōsuke.

Takasugi Shinsaku sent the summons to Kido to come home to Chōshū to take charge of the government in March 1865. Takasugi’s coup d'etat resulted from a daring raid by his shotai irregulars, or militiamen; and the domain now belonged to the lower samurai leadership.

Takasugi’s coup d'etat started with that raid by the Kiheitai, but there followed a brief civil war within Chōshū as well, by whichTakasugi gained power. As for Katsura, Huber and Craig write that he sent Ikumatsu to Takasugi to see if he could come back to Chōshū safely. Government leadership fell to Katsura because by then he was the highest ranking member of his party left alive. Some time around this point, Katsura received the new name, Kido Takayoshi, from the Chōshū daimyo: a mark of promotion.

This revolutionary government under Kido and Takasugi built up an autonomous military base under the slogans “full independence of central control” and “reliance on arms.” It successfully conducted the War of the Four Borders against Bakufu forces in 1865-1866. Kido called home the great military reformer Ōmura Masujirō from Tosa to develop Western rifle units. The new de facto prime minister also obtained access to 8,000 modern rifle units through an English trader in Nagasaki.

The War of the Four Borders from the Bakufu’s perspective is called the Second Chōshū Expedition. The rifles were supplied through Thomas Glover. Brown’s article on Glover’s relationship with Chōshū is available here.

One purpose of the secret Satsuma-Chōshū alliance which Kido negotiated with Saigō was to allow Chōshū to use Satsuma’s names for these arms purchases (as Chōshū was barred from Nagasaki for earlier fighting with the Shogunate). Remote Satsuma in turn was allowed to use the Chōshū port of Shimonoseki as a staging base for troops being moved closer to the center of the national political arena in Kyoto.

Sakamoto Ryōma was the mediator who brought the two enemy domains together to negotiate an alliance. Sakamoto was also involved in the smuggling of war supplies to Chōshū, and fought in one engagement alongside Takasugi.

With Takasugi’s early demise from tuberculosis in 1867, Kido stood as the sole senior leader in Chōshū. His ability was evident in forging the Satsuma-Chōshū alliance which was to result in the Meiji Revolution. Kido also became the dominant figure because he was slightly older than the other loyalists, a bit higher in social rank, and, owing to his long absence from the domain to conduct its diplomacy, uninvolved in bitter local factional struggles. Finally, Kido came to the top partly because he survived the turbulent 1860s which wiped out much of Chōshū’s radical loyalist leadership. More moderate and careful than Yoshida Shōin, who was executed, or Kusaka Genzui, who committed seppuku after sustaining a wound at Hamaguri Gate, Kido lived on to become the ranking leader when the loyalist cause prospered.

Katsura’s survival by stealth earned him the nickname “Runaway Kogorō.” And it’s what inspired Hideaki Sorachi to model a main character after him.

The rebel Zura is modeled after Katsura Kogoro, who was called “Runaway Kogoro” because he used all kinds of tricks and disguises to elude the Shinsengumi. Even though a lot of the rebels from that era died from assassination or in battle, Kogoro lived on for years afterward. Samurai are obsessed with appearances. They’re the kind of guys who’ll walk right up and go, “You Shinsengumi are losers,” and get killed, so I fell in love with the image of a special case who, when he runs away, would do it single-mindedly, giving it his all. So that’s how Zura turned out like that. Though with Zura it’s not camouflage. He seems to be having fun doing it too, doesn’t he?

From Gintama Vol. 8, Viz translation

Although his Chōshū mentors and colleagues did not survive to realize their aim of national leadership under an Emperor, Kido remembered them often in the diary which he began to keep soon after his arrival in Kyoto to join the new Meiji government on 18 February 1868. A bridge reminded him of Yoshida Shōin, his ideological mentor [5 November 1868]. An old pine bought back memories of Murata Seifū, who set the stage for reform in Chōshū. The geisha whom Sufu Masanosuke loved bought tears to the eyes of Kido when he thought of that ill-fated, impassioned leader who first brought the younger man into the inner political circle of Chōshū [10 May 1868]. A pilgrimage to Takasugi’s tomb near Shimonoseki and a visit with Takasugi’s mistress moved Kido to reminisce about the man whose reckless coup set the stage for radical control of Chōshū [27 June 1868].

[note: Baisho, Takasugi’s mistress, traveled to Nagasaki with Kido’s official party aboard a ship owned by the English merchant, Thomas Glover.]

Takasugi’s mistress was named Uno. She became a Buddhist nun, with the name of Baisho. Information about her and Takasugi’s family here.

Likewise, a graveside visit in Hagi where Yamada Uemon lay buried called to mind that older man’s support in bringing Ōmura back to reorganize the Chōshū military forces [11 June 1868]. Kido inherited the mantles worn by those late loyalists of Chōshū.

In the new central government after 1868 Kido spoke for Chōshū, which, with Satsuma, dominated the regime, and carried into effect policies to which he had become heir. The Charter Oath of Five Articles, the Emperor’s 7 April 1868 statement on behalf of principles of centralization and Westernization, was drafted in part by Kido.

On 23 April 1868 Kido put his brush to his diary for the first time, and continued it with hardly an interruption until just before his death in May 1877. During those nine years Kido held many important offices, the most influential being that of Imperial Councilor, or Sangi, 1869-1874, 1875-1876. The end of the feudal administrative structure derived from his initiatives; and he reflected on his greatest political success in a diary entry for 29 August 1871 when he witnessed the feudal lords being summoned before the Throne and relieved of their ancient hereditary offices and properties.

It’s not made clear in this short biography, but while beginning with a strong position, Kido was soon pushed aside in the new Meiji government’s squabbles. He continued to be a powerful statesman, but never regained his original power.

Kido traveled abroad with the Iwakura mission, 1871-1873. Although the embassy failed to revise the unequal treaties, the trip educated the principal Meiji leaders for the task Japan faced. Kido had charge of the embassy section which investigated American and European constitutions, as well as their educational and military organizations. He returned to Japan committed to the cause of reform with peace, abandoning an earlier proposal to invade Korea.

Kido, Ōkubo and some others arrived in Japan to stop a plan to invade Korea. Their objections to the plan weren’t as moral as some have painted them, more practically focused, but at least they did put off that invasion for a while.

Significantly, Kido touched off the movement to establish a constitution along German lines in his famous memorial of September 1873. Aoki Shūzō, Kido’s old Hagi neighbor who was by then a student in Berlin, prepared a draft constitution, by which Kido intended to broaden participation in government, but on a limited and gradual basis.

Specifically, he and the other Iwakura delegates were impressed by the governance of Otto von Bismarck, whom they met in Germany.

Kido emerged as the most liberal and humane member of the government even as his influence waned. In May 1874, he left office to protest the expensive and provocative Taiwan expedition; but in January 1875 he returned to his old position as Imperial Councilor following the Osaka Conference, which he regarded as a promise that his constitutional ideas would be implemented. When that did not happen, he retreated from the front line in 1876 to a post which allowed him to oversee the moral instruction of the young Meiji Emperor. Meantime Kido criticized measures which impoverished the shizoku and the peasantry, and obtained some modification of policy.

‘Shizoku’ = former samurai

His metaphor was the human body, which must not have all the blood rush to the brain (the capital), but should allow some to circulate in the limbs (the localities). Knowledge of the economic depression which had overtaken his old comrades who remained behind in Hagi and Yamaguchi, and some fear of their counter-revolutionary potential, had changed his mind. From exponent of centralization, he moved toward a policy of leaving tax monies with the localities.

The counter-revolutionary potential took real form in the short-lived uprising in 1870 of many of the old Kiheitai members. Kido was in Hagi during the uprising, and the conspirators’ plan was to assassinate him, but he hid in a rice field. Kawakami Gensai (the model for Himura Kenshin in Rurouni Kenshin, and Kawakami Bansai in Gintama) was executed for taking in and hiding his old Kiheitai comrades who fled to his domain after their rebellion had been suppressed.

Then there was the larger 1876 Hagi Rebellion led by former colleague, Maebara Issei. Other uprisings happened across the country, culminating in the Satsuma Rebellion / Seinan War.

On May 1877 Kido died in Kyoto, where he had gone to attend the Emperor Meiji during the suppression of the Satsuma Rebellion. Despite his criticism Kido remained loyal to the central government to the end. Of the early Meiji triumvirate, Kido alone “died on the tatami.”

The triumvirate mentioned here are called “The Three Great Nobles of the Restoration”: Kido Takayoshi, and Satsuma’s Saigō Takamori and Ōkubo Toshimichi. According to legend, Kido’s last words on his deathbed were “Isn’t this enough, Saigō?”

Saigō committed seppuku when his backward-looking rebellion collapsed later in 1877. Ōkubo fell under assassins’ swords when his English horse-carriage was intercepted en route to the Palace in Tokyo on 14 May 1878 by six declassed samurai, angry at their loss of privilege.

In Rurouni Kenshin, Ōkubo’s murdered by Seta Sōjirōon Shishio Makoto’s orders. The six samurai take the credit.

Finished. This took an incredible amount of fact-checking and re-writing. If you see any errors, please tell me.

A Short Biography of  Katsura Kogoro / Kido Takayoshi (with my Commentary) (2024)
Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Margart Wisoky

Last Updated:

Views: 6406

Rating: 4.8 / 5 (78 voted)

Reviews: 85% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Margart Wisoky

Birthday: 1993-05-13

Address: 2113 Abernathy Knoll, New Tamerafurt, CT 66893-2169

Phone: +25815234346805

Job: Central Developer

Hobby: Machining, Pottery, Rafting, Cosplaying, Jogging, Taekwondo, Scouting

Introduction: My name is Margart Wisoky, I am a gorgeous, shiny, successful, beautiful, adventurous, excited, pleasant person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.