Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast, episode 463, The After Lives of a Samurai.

On the morning of the sixth day of the fourth intercalorie month of 1868, which, if I'm doing

my math right, is May 29, 1868, though converting from the lunar calendar is not something I'm

great at,

a bound man was taken out of a makeshift prison on the banks of the Kawazu River in the village of Mizunuma, in what's now Gunma Prefecture northwest of Tokyo.

The man's arms and legs were bound, and he was taken to the banks of the river.

That didn't seem to dampen

his spirits over much, though, when one of his captors pushed him roughly forward, he

reputedly called the man a disrespectful lout. Despite his bravado, the man couldn't do much

about being forced to bend over. After being allowed some final words, asking apparently for clemency for his family,

a low-ranking samurai drew a sword and decapitated the prisoner. Apparently it took him three

swings before the head came off. The decapitated man's name was Oguri Tatamasa, and in his rather

violent death he holds a somewhat unique distinction.

You see, Oguri died in 1868 in the midst of the Botion War that brought about the downfall of

samurai rule in Japan and the inauguration of a new imperial government, the Meiji Restoration, as it's

often known. Commonly the conflicts of the Botion government, the Meiji Restoration, as it's often known.

Commonly, the conflicts of the Botion War and the Restoration are talked about in a rather

peculiar way in Japan. If you go to the country today, you'll notice that commemorations

tend to be somewhat, for lack of a better term, politically agnostic.

To put it another way, there are no villains, or at least very few.

Everyone is a hero, fighting for their idea of a good future for Japan. The whole thing is very

reminiscent of a sort of Shakespearean tragedy, all of these noble figures driven to their tragic but

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