Sakamoto Ryoma — The Man Who Wrote That He Could Not Die

Ahem, Ahem

"Well, well. A person's life is full of things you can't make sense of. That has always been so. An unlucky man may step out of the bath, split his balls open, and die."

The letter goes on.

"Compared to that, I am lucky. However many deadly places I go to, I can't die. Even when I think I'll kill myself, it turns out I have to go on living."

And then comes the thing he most wanted to write.

"Now I am the student of a man called Katsu Rintaro, the number one man in Japan."

So he would not go home until he was about forty. He had talked it over with his brother, who had been in a very good mood lately and gave his permission. He was working hard for the country and for everyone under heaven. Please be happy for me. That is how the letter ends.

Below that, there was one more line.

"Please show this, quietly, to the people you spend time with, if they are very close friends."

Show my bragging letter, but do it quietly.

The writer was Sakamoto Ryoma, twenty-seven years old. The reader was his older sister, Otome, at home in Tosa, which is now Kochi Prefecture.

About a year earlier, Ryoma had slipped out of his home domain.

Let me go back a little.

Ryoma was born the second son of a gōshi, a low-ranking samurai family, in the castle town of Kochi.

Some stories about his childhood survive in later biographies. After the age of ten he still wet his bed, and the neighbors called him "snot-nose." He went to a private school but did not learn much, and he came home crying when the others teased him. But the author of that biography admits himself that there is no way to check whether this is true.

Later, it is also said, Ryoma told people:

"I gave up studying when I was little, and now I regret it."

In 1862, twenty-six-year-old Ryoma was a comrade of Takechi Hanpeita. Takechi led the samurai of Tosa and was trying to act for the sake of the country. Ryoma had seen how other domains were moving. When he got back to Kochi, he reported to Takechi and asked what their own domain was going to do. Takechi gave a great sigh and answered, they say:

"We are still working on it."

Ryoma was deeply disappointed, they say.

Less than a month later, Ryoma slipped out of his domain. This was called dappan. A han was like a small country ruled by a lord. To leave it without permission was a crime.

That year, in the tenth month of the old lunar calendar, Ryoma visited a man's house in Edo. He was an official of the shogun's government, the shogun being the military ruler of Japan. His name was Katsu Rintaro, later known as Katsu Kaishu.

Katsu was always arguing that Japan should deal with foreign countries and open up. Was he really the villain people said he was? Ryoma would meet him, test his arguments, and, if need be, cut him down on the spot. With that in mind, it is said, Ryoma brought along his friend Chiba Jutaro.

Katsu understood right away, they say.

"If you two have come to stab me... no, even if you hide it, the killing mood shows between your eyebrows. I will not refuse to face you. But first, please hear the argument I have in my chest. After that, let us fight."

Katsu started with the history of European armies and explained, at length, that the lords of Japan could never stand up to the power of a navy. Ryoma was swept away as if he were drunk. From now on, he vowed, he would learn from Katsu and build a navy for Japan. So the story goes.

He had gone to cut a man down, and he came away as that man's student.

Katsu even arranged to have Ryoma's crime forgiven.

In 1863, at the port of Shimoda on the Izu Peninsula, Katsu happened to meet Yamauchi Yodo, the former lord of Tosa. Katsu is said to have told him:

"I have a student named Sakamoto Ryoma. ...Lately he is very keen on the art of sailing, and he understands most of what is going on in the West. He is an interesting fellow. If you forgive his crime of leaving the domain, he will be of real use to you."

Yodo was in high spirits and said he would forgive him. But a man who speaks while drunk might forget what he said. Katsu asked for a note as proof. Yodo, it is said, drew a gourd on a piece of paper and wrote a line of poetry inside it.

In April of that year, Ryoma's crime of leaving the domain was forgiven. The letter at the beginning was written less than a month later.

About two months after that, Ryoma wrote to his sister again. He had become a student of the great teacher Katsu,

"and I am loved beyond all measure. I am now something like a guest of honor."

A guest of honor is not family, but someone treated with care, as a guest.

In Hyogo, a big place for teaching naval skills would be built. Four or five hundred students would gather from all over. He would study there too, and practice with ships. After writing all this, he ended:

"I'm wearing a slightly Ahem face, in secret."

"And once more, Ahem, Ahem."

This time the postscript said: please do not say a word about this even to your close friends. Some people see things differently, so please just hear it yourself, sister.

Show it, or don't show it?

The next letter begins with a warning. This letter is all about important things, so never show it to anyone who flaps their mouth.

The contents really were big. He and his comrades would join forces and strike down the corrupt officials who were secretly dealing with foreign countries, and then,

"we will give Japan one more good washing."

Japan, washed once more.

In the same letter, Ryoma quickly makes himself small.

"Even as I say this, I will never, ever let it go to my head."

"Like a mud sparrow-clam, I always have soil on the tip of my nose and sand on my head."

And he wrote this too. It is useless to think that I will live long. But like anyone else, I will not die for no reason. The day I die will be a day of great trouble for everyone under heaven.

Ryoma would walk into deadly places again and again after this.

The Night After the Bath

In 1864, Ryoma met Saigo Kichinosuke of Satsuma for the first time. He would later be known as Saigo Takamori. My teacher keeps praising him, so I will go and see him myself, Ryoma said. Please write me a letter of introduction. Katsu wrote it for him right away, he told people later.

When Ryoma came back from the meeting, he is said to have told Katsu:

"Well, this Saigo is a hard man to figure out. If you tap him a little, he rings a little. If you tap him hard, he rings loud. If he is a fool, he is a big fool. If he is clever, he is a big clever man."

Ryoma has a good eye for people, too, Katsu added.

In the eleventh month of the old calendar that year, Katsu was called back to Edo by the shogun's government, and his naval school in Kobe was closed. Ryoma and the others had nowhere to go. Katsu left them in the care of Komatsu Tatewaki of Satsuma.

After that, Ryoma went back and forth between Satsuma and Choshu. The two domains were on bad terms, and he was trying to make peace between them.

He was in Shimonoseki when a friend he had not seen for a long time dropped in at his inn on other business. It was Ike Kurata, who had also left Tosa without permission.

The two of them clapped their hands. It must be fate, how strange, how strange, they laughed. Ryoma wrote this in a letter to Ike's family.

Ike bragged. He had been on the battlefield eight or nine times and had not been wounded once. When the enemy was thirty or forty ken (about sixty meters) away and the bullets came flying, most men dropped to the ground. But at that distance, the bullet is faster than you, even if you lie down. It is pointless, he said, so he stood and gave orders.

In the same letter, Ryoma also wrote:

"Kura is loud and mean-mouthed, and everybody hates him. But in a battle he turns into a good man, and I hear they all love him. I laughed out loud."

And then the two of them made a promise.

"From now on, let's not start any more pointless fights, and let's not die for pointless things. We promised each other firmly."

On the same date, Ryoma also wrote a long letter to his sister. It was about a woman.

She was the daughter of a doctor's family in Kyoto. Her father had died, and the family she left behind had been selling their belongings to get by. When her younger sister was tricked by bad men and sold off in Osaka, the girl sold her own kimono for money, tucked a knife into her robe, and marched into Osaka. She confronted two bad men, grabbed them by the collar, and hit them. Give my sister back, or this is the end, she said, and she got her sister back.

"This woman is truly interesting. She plays the yueqin, a round Chinese lute."

"Her name is Ryo, and she is like me."

She was Oryo, who would later become Ryoma's wife. Her name means "dragon," just like the first part of his own.

When the new year came, in 1866, Kido Takayoshi of Choshu and Saigo and the others from Satsuma met in Kyoto and agreed to join hands. One night the talks were stuck, and it is said that Ryoma pressed Saigo hard.

Four nights later, it happened.

The place was Teradaya, a boatman's inn in Fushimi, south of Kyoto. It was about three in the morning. Ryoma had just come out of the bath and was talking with his companion, Miyoshi Shinzo. They were about to go to sleep. The two were upstairs.

Someone was walking softly downstairs. They also heard the clatter of a staff about 1.8 meters long.

Then Oryo came running from the kitchen. In a letter Ryoma later wrote to his brothers, she said:

"Be careful. Enemies have attacked, out of nowhere. Men with spears are coming up the ladder-stairs."

His hakama (the wide, pleated trousers worn over a kimono) was in the next room, and there was no time to put it on. Ryoma put his sword at his waist and took up a six-shot pistol. It was a gift from Takasugi Shinsaku of Choshu. Miyoshi put on his hakama and held up his spear.

When Oryo had the sliding doors taken off, about ten men were already lined up with spears.

In the standoff, Ryoma spoke first.

"Why are you being rude to a samurai of Satsuma?"

Ryoma was not a samurai of Satsuma. The men shouted "By order!" and pushed in. "By order" meant it came from above, from the shogun's government.

Ryoma fired. One man fell back. Then the next.

From behind a paper screen, another man slashed at him with a short sword. It cut away the base of his right thumb, split the joint of his left thumb, and cut the bone joint of his left index finger.

He tried to reload, but the cut fingers would not move as he wanted. He dropped the cylinder that held the bullets. He searched for it, but it was lost among the tossed bedding and the ashes of the brazier the enemy had thrown in.

Ryoma gave up the gun. He told Miyoshi, and Miyoshi said:

"Then all the more reason to charge in among the enemy and fight."

Ryoma answered:

"Let's get out in the meantime."

Miyoshi threw down his spear too, and the two went down the back stairs. They broke through the shutters of the house behind and went in. The people there seemed to have run away half asleep, leaving their bedding laid out. Sorry about that, Ryoma wrote. They tried to take the sliding doors off, but it was a sturdy house and they would not give. They cut through with their swords and kicked through with their feet, and finally came out on the street behind.

They ran about five chō, a little over 500 meters. He was just up from an illness, and his breath gave out. His bath-fresh robe tangled around his legs. A man should not wear a robe that hangs below his shins. He thought this at the time, and he went out of his way to write it in the letter.

They turned into a side street, crawled in through a water gate, climbed onto a pile of lumber, and lay down.

"Just then, unluckily, a dog began to bark, and we were truly in trouble."

Miyoshi ran to the Satsuma residence and came back with the people there. Oryo, too, had warned the residence that same night.

The wounds were shallow, but it seems they had touched an artery. The next day the bleeding would not stop, and for about three days, every time he stood up to use the toilet, his eyes spun.

When Saigo heard the news, he tried to load his pistol himself and run out, and the people around him held him back. Instead, Yoshii Kosuke came on horseback with about sixty samurai to fetch him.

It was an unexpected stroke of luck to have met such flustered men of the shogun's government. Komatsu and Saigo said so to each other and laughed out loud, Ryoma wrote.

His fingers were a little stiff after that. Even so, Ryoma wrote to his brothers that this was "the glory of a lifetime."

In the letter to his sister, he wrote:

"Because this dragon lady was there, Ryoma's life was saved."

To heal his wounds, Ryoma set out for Satsuma with Oryo. In April 1866, the Satsuma ship that left Osaka carried Saigo, Komatsu and Miyoshi. It also carried Ike Kurata, the man he had promised not to die for pointless things.

Ike got off at Nagasaki, along the way.