Originally published on July 7, 2019.
Through a Sankei Shimbun book review of Tokutomi Sohō’s Yoshida Shōin, this essay reflects on Yoshida Shōin’s world-historical perspective, his extraordinary drive for action, and the lineage of duty and aspiration that runs from Yokoi Shōnan to Tokutomi Sohō and Gotō Shinpei.
It conveys a renewed and deep admiration for the scale of Shōin’s thought and life, as he seriously contemplated Japan’s course in the world after the Opium War.

2019-07-07
Shōin, under a strong sense of crisis that after the Qing dynasty had been defeated by Britain in the Opium War, Japan would be the next target, asked himself, “How should Japan live within the world?” and planned to stow away abroad in order to know the world.

The following is from today’s book review section of the Sankei Shimbun.
Until August five years ago, when I was still subscribing to The Asahi Shimbun, the section I read most carefully was the book review section…I hardly read things like Tensei Jingo except diagonally…and in the end, out of frustration and anger at having been made to read reviews by people who were not only worthless but had continued inflicting astronomical damage on Japan, I stopped subscribing to Asahi, and even after switching to subscriptions to the Sankei, Nikkei, and Yomiuri, I hardly read book reviews anymore.
Only occasionally do I read Sankei’s book reviews.
Today was one of those days, and there were two fine reviews I would like to introduce.
Yoshida Shōin, by Tokutomi Sohō (Iwanami Bunko, 780 yen plus tax).
I began reading books on Yoshida Shōin (1830–59) around the time just before I graduated from university.
I had one company from which I had received an informal offer, but I did not feel like joining it, and was thinking I might start a cram school instead.
While researching private schools of the late Tokugawa period, I became interested in the Shōkasonjuku where Shōin taught, and in the library I was reading such works as Shōin’s Yūshūroku.
Around 1981, Tokutomi Sohō’s Yoshida Shōin, by the first-rank journalist who had been active from Meiji through Shōwa, was republished by Iwanami Shoten, and I picked it up.
In 1854, when Perry returned, Shōin attempted to stow away overseas at Shimoda and failed.
During his confinement, he taught at the Shōkasonjuku, and in the end he was executed after criticizing the shogunate’s foreign policy.
Sohō places Shōin’s life within its era and captures the essence in brief expressions.
In the opening section, “Who, then, is Yoshida Shōin?” he writes, “He had many plans, and not one success.
His history was a history of setbacks.
His whole life was a life of failure,” and in relation to the Restoration he evaluates him by saying, “He was as a mother in difficult childbirth.
Though she herself died, her infant grew, and grew tall.”
Regarding Shōin, whose life was long in both travel and imprisonment, Sohō speaks of the depth of his love for his family, saying, “Just as the sunflower always turns toward the sun, just as the magnetic needle always points north, just as the river’s flow always enters the sea, so his heart always ran toward his family,” and introduces a letter to his younger sister in which he wrote, “It is the proper way for a woman to revere her husband as she does her parents.”
He also inserts Shōin’s feelings toward his parents by quoting the poem he composed when he learned of his own death sentence: “Greater than the heart that thinks of one’s parents is the heart of the parents thinking of their child; how will they hear today’s news?”
It is also unique, and stirs the interest, that Sohō views the age from a world-historical perspective, for example by comparing him with the contemporary Italian revolutionary Mazzini.
Shōin, under the strong sense of crisis that after the Qing dynasty had been defeated by Britain in the Opium War, Japan would be the next target, thought about “how Japan should live within the world,” and attempted to stow away abroad in order to know the world.
Each time I reread it, I am moved, even now 160 years later, by the sheer scale and power of action of Shōin, who in his twenties lived so seriously, prepared for death, and worried over Japan’s future within world history.
At present, I am focusing on Gotō Shinpei, a “forerunner of his age,” who was born in the late Tokugawa period and lived through Meiji, Taishō, and the early Shōwa years.
Gotō was discovered by Yasuba Yasukazu, the foremost disciple of the late-Tokugawa thinker Yokoi Shōnan.
He became a lifelong friend of Sohō, whose father was likewise a disciple of Shōnan.
Shōin, too, visited Shōnan several times and sought his teaching.
One can clearly see the lineage of “duty and aspiration” running from Shōnan to Shōin to Sohō to Gotō.
In 1989 I founded Fujiwara Shoten and have published many books of the Annales school, the “new history,” such as The Mediterranean, in order to introduce into Japan a historical eye that grasps the whole across national borders.
Like Shōin, I hope to think about the direction Japan should take from a world-historical perspective and be of use as a publisher.
Deeply Moved by a World-Historical Perspective.
Fujiwara Shoten President.
Fujiwara Yoshio.
Fujiwara Yoshio was born in 1949 in Osaka Prefecture.
He graduated from Osaka City University.
In 1989 he founded Fujiwara Shoten, and the publication of The Mediterranean in five volumes by the French historian Braudel became widely noted.
In 2018, he received the Prix du Rayonnement de la langue et de la littérature françaises from the Académie Française, the most authoritative academic body in France.
◇ Tokutomi Sohō’s Yoshida Shōin was published in 1893.
It discusses Shōin’s influence on the patriots of the late Tokugawa period and compares him with heroes of other countries, and is regarded as a masterpiece among Sohō’s many historical essays.