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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 March 2011
In studying the background of Japan's expansionist policy it is necessary to take into account the part played by Yoshida Shōin, one of the most picturesque and colorful personalities in modern Japanese history. Yoshida was one of the outstanding figures of the movement which in 1868 overthrew the Shogunate and restored the Imperial authority. “If we are going to speak of the Restoration,” Mr. Iichiro Tokutomi points out in his biographical study, “we must necessarily speak of Yoshida Shōin. Just as a mother may die in giving birth to her child, but the child lives and grows to manhood, so we may say he was the mother and child of the Restoration.”
1 Iichiro Tokutomi, “Life of Shōin Yoshida,” translated from the Japanese by Cole-man, Horace E., Transactions of the Asiatic society of Japan, 14, Part 1 (1917), p. 126.Google Scholar
2 Tokutomi, , op. cit., p. 163.Google Scholar
3 Morris, J., Makers of modem Japan (London: Methuen & Co., 1906).Google Scholar
4 Stevenson, R. L., Familiar studies of men and books (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923), p. 158.Google Scholar
5 Ibid., p. 156.
6 Hawks, Francis L., Narrative of the expedition of an American squadron to the China Seas and Japan (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1856), p. 486.Google Scholar
7 Actually this was far from the truth. Tokutomi records that at the age of 11 Yoshida gave a lecture on military history before Mōri, Yoshichika, the clan Lord, who expressed astonishment at the boy's erudition.
8 Hawks, , op. cit., p. 485.Google Scholar
9 Ibid., p. 487.
10 Lanman, Charles, Leading men of Japan (Boston: D. Lothrop & Co., 1882), p. 252.Google Scholar
11 Ibid., pp. 253–54.
12 Hamada, Kengi, Prince Ito (Tokyo: Sanseido Co., 1936), p. 14.Google Scholar
13 Ibid., p. 16.
14 Ibid., p. 46.
15 Fujisawa, Rikitaro, The recent aims and political development of Japan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1923), pp. 31–32.Google Scholar
16 Dumoulin, Heinrich, “Yoshida Shōin (1830–1859)—Ein beitrag zum verständnis der geistigen quellen der Meijerneuerung,” Monumenta Nipponica, 1 (1938), pp. 58–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17 Ibid., pp. 66–67. Translated from the German by Hubert Freyn.
18 Ibid., pp. 68–71.
19 Tokutomi, , op. cit., p. 165.Google Scholar
20 Ibid., p. 161. Coleman, in his translation, wrongly identified Luzon and other Philippine islands with the “Loochoo” (Ryuku or Liu-ch'iu) islands already referred to previously. See Kuno, Yoshi S., Japanese expansion on the Asiatic continent (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1940) vol. 2, pp. 354–55.Google Scholar
21 Ibid., p. 162.
22 Welden, Frederick, “Hashimoto Sanai: A Japanese martyr,” The Journal of the Rutgers University Library, 4 (December, 1940), pp. 15–21.Google Scholar
23 Kuno, , op. cit., vol. 2, p. 231.Google Scholar
24 Ibid., p. 215.
25 Ibid., p. 217.
26 Kuno, , op. cit., p. 232.Google Scholar
27 Ibid., pp. 351 ff.
