As I prefer the Genji Monogatari to the Heike Monogatari and the courtly Heian period to the savage age of the samurai that followed it, I also have never been very enthusiastic about the Bakumatsu period, the violent last years of the Tokugawa Shogunate which lasted from the arrival of Perry's Black Ships in 1853 to the end of the regime in 1868. Moreover, this was a period of extreme nationalism (another phenomenon I despise) and anti-Western hatred - it was a dangerous time to be in Japan as several murders of Westerners demonstrate. I also was not so enthusiastic about Sakamoto Ryoma, for I had read the study by Marius Jansen (Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration) which shows him to have been a bit player and someone in the background rather than a leader.
But now I have read the first part of the translation of Shiba Ryotaro's huge novel Ryoma! and I have changed my mind. In the first place, Shiba has deeply studied this period and his facts are all correct. He is also a great author who knows how to bring this period to life by a judicious addition of fiction. There is a lot of history in his novel (so much, that In the U.S. it could be classified as "non-fiction" - American non-fiction, about for example books about WWII, often has a much larger addition of fictional elements, such as showing us what leaders were thinking etc). There are also authorial intrusions, but I like that, it has something post-modern about it.
Another thing I learned from this novel is the feeling for the period in which is is set, and how large the transformation of Japan from a feudal to a modern society was. For example, in the Edo period Japan was divided into more than 200 feudal domains (besides some territory governed directly by the shogunate), the personal property of the daimyo, who were vassals of the Tokugawa Shogun - and for the inhabitants of those domains, these were almost like modern countries which defined their identity. Rules were different between different domains, and culture was also different, but one thing all had in common: the almost absolute power of the domain lord, the daimyo. From this situation it was a huge step to the creation of one, undivided modern nation...
[Sakamoto Ryoma in 1867]
Shiba Ryotaro (1923-1996) started writing historical novels after World War II. The pen name "Shiba" he selected is suggestive: it is the name of the famous Chinese historian Sima Qian, who lived 2,000 years ago. Shiba won the prestigious Naoki Prize for his 1959 novel, Fukuro no Shiro (Owl Castle). Better known are his long novels Ryoma ga Yuku ("Ryoma!"), about the life of Sakamoto Ryoma, and Sakanoue no Kumo (Clouds Above the Hill: A Historical Novel of the Russo-Japanese War, Volume 1), another novel about the turbulent times around the end of the shogunate and beginning of modern Japan. Another series that won him fame were his travel essays, 1,146 installments in all, printed first in the Shukan Asahi magazine and then issued as a series of books called Kaido wo Yuku (“Going along the Highways”). These were also made into a documentary series by NHK. In fact, many of Shiba's 500 books were filmed or made into TV dramas, especially the NHK historical “Taiga” dramas broadcast on Sunday evening. Even in his novels, many parts read like essays - the story leans on the historical sources and Shiba's interpretation of them.
Ryoma!, arguably Shiba's greatest novel, was serialized from 1962 to 1966 in the national newspaper Sankei Shinbun, and tells the epic life of Sakamoto Ryoma - a low ranking samurai of the Tosa domain (now Kochi Prefecture). Shiba depicts the life of Sakamoto Ryoma against the background of historical events as the 1866 formation of a military alliance between the two powerful domains, Satsuma and Choshu, which led to the overthrow of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the formation of the new Meiji government the next year.
But more than that, Ryoma! is a riveting and vivid story about the life of a brilliant young man in turbulent times. Sakamoto Ryoma starts life as an apolitical, low-ranking samurai from the countryside, who is only interested in improving his sword fighting skills in Edo - until he gradually realizes that Japan was almost powerless in the face of the technology and well-developed industry of the Western powers, and that it was his duty to help it adopt elements of Western culture to develop into a strong country. Ryoma has been heavily romanticized in Japanese popular culture, something which was helped by the fact that he died a tragic death at a very young age: in 1867 he was assassinated in Kyoto. Although now considered as a romantic hero and great leader, Sakamoto Ryoma was not well known in Japan prior to the publication of Shiba's novel, which became a great bestseller and sold 24 million copies.
The excellent translation (by Paul McCarthy and Juliet Winters Carpenter, with Phyllis Birnbaum as editor) is prefaced by a historical introduction by Henry D. Smith II.
There is a Sakamoto Ryoma Museum in Kochi (https://ryoma-kinenkan.jp/country/en/); the Ryozen Museum of History in Kyoto is also dedicated to Ryoma and the Bakumatsu period (https://www.ryozen-museum.or.jp/en/). Next to the museum is the grave of Sakamoto Ryoma, in the Kyoto Ryozen Gokoku Shrine (http://www.gokoku.or.jp/en/index.html).
The murder of Sakamoto Ryoma is the subject of the 1974 film Ryoma Ansatsu, starring Harada Yoshio, Matsuda Yusaku, Ishibashi Renji, and Momoi Kaori, and directed by Kuroki Kazuo.