Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast, episode 435, The Wrong Kind of Hero, Part 3.

In retrospect, the period Sakamoto-Dioma spent with Katsukai-su, the man he'd planned to kill,

ended up being one of the most formative times of his whole political career.

First, of course, Katsu's pragmatic approach to foreign policy, the foreigners could not be

defeated and had to be accommodated, while Japan slowly grew stronger, radically influenced

Sakamoto. But second, and probably more importantly, because of his association with

Katsu, Sakamoto was safe from a political

title wave that otherwise likely would have gotten him killed.

In 1862, when Sakamoto had fled his home in Tosa and made his way first to Kyoto and then

to Edo to kill Katsu, the ideology of imperial loyalism to which he subscribed,

appeared to be on the ascent. Loyalist samurai were gaining influence over some of Japan's

most important domains and forging political alliances with members of the Kyoto aristocracy

to influence the decision-making of the Emperor Colme.

However, starting in 1863, all of these advances fell to pieces.

Attempts by loyalists to seize control of domain governments in places where they were strong

fell flat on their face.

In Sakamoto's home province of Tosa, loyalists succeeded in assassinating an

evil minister, who they blamed for the domain's lack of commitment to the loyalist cause, Yoshida Toyo.

However, the assassination accomplished very little. It was never really punished, but only because

more conservative samurai in the domain

had already disliked Toyo and his reforms and quashed any investigation. The assassination did not

succeed in driving the domain any closer to loyalism. Indeed, the very next year, the leader of

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