Received 20 February 2024, Accepted 1 July 2024, Available online 6 September 2024
doi: coming soon
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Abstract 

In the mid-nineteenth century, feudal Japan sent two dozen of their best and brightest to study abroad in the United Kingdom. Some of those figures, upon their return to Japan, would later earn very prominent positions in the Meiji government or society, successfully translating their time abroad into a mantle of authority on the wider world. But there is something odd about this link between experiences abroad and such figures' prominence later in life: it appears that in general, those who spent the least time abroad in the UK in the 1860s tended to reach the greatest socio-political prominence once they returned to Japan. And of the four most famous “students” to be sent to the UK, two actually never enrolled in any sort of formal instruction at all. In that sense, the importance of these four to Meiji-era Japanese society seems unlikely to be born out of any of the tangible benefits of study abroad.

In this article, I focus not only on the actual accomplishments but also the posthumous reputations of the most famous four to be sent to the UK. These four were Itō Hirobumi, Inoue Kaoru, Mori Arinori and Godai Tomoatsu, and they have perhaps unsurprisingly been celebrated much more in Japan than in the land of their relatively brief sojourns abroad. I suggest reasons why Godai, in particular, has enjoyed a surge in popularity over 150 years after his return from the UK, and what makes him, even more than the more controversial figures of Mori or Itō, an appealing figure to twenty-first century audiences. By exploring how and why certain figures are chosen for apotheosis as national heroes, I aim to understand how these figures reflect contemporary society’s values, and how those values have changed over the intervening years.

Keywords: Japanese history, study abroad, United Kingdom, Mori Arinori, Godai Tomoatsu,  Itō Hirobumi 

The degree to which the earliest Japanese individuals to study abroad in the United Kingdom (in the 1860s) have been remembered and celebrated in both Japan and the UK varies greatly.[1] In this article, I present a tentative theory as to why certain figures, notably Itō Hirobumi and Inoue Kaoru from the Chōshū Five and Godai Tomoatsu—and to a much lesser extent Mori Arinori—from the Satsuma 19, have received the lion’s share of attention, leaving other, potentially equally deserving study abroad pioneers to languish in obscurity. As such, facts about the historical figures or their activities per se are not the main focus; this topic has been comprehensively covered in the existing historiography, most notably (in English) by Andrew Cobbing. Instead, I offer a comparative dimension regarding fame and memory: the different ways these figures have been remembered and commemorated in Japan (where some though not by any means all of them are quite famous and celebrated even today) and in the UK. Why is there such a striking ‘gap’ in appreciation for these pioneering students? Why were—and are—some (though not others) still so famous as to be considered national heroes in Japan only to be utterly forgotten in the UK?

How and why the Japanese students in the 1860s have (not) been remembered in the UK

The final question proved to be the easiest to answer. There seems to be a general lack of interest in the UK on the overall subject of Japan’s earliest student visitors, such that even prominent British figures involved in this process are not necessarily remembered. My investigation ranged for hundreds of miles all over the country, from Aberdeen in the north to Oldham in the old industrial heartland to the Queen’s Gallery exhibit on Japan in Buckingham Palace. But the sites I visited either made no mention at all of the Japanese individuals who had spent some of their formative years there (or those British figures who helped them), or they made reference to them in only the most general terms. For example, the local archive in Aberdeen did have some materials on native son Thomas Blake Glover, including an entire pamphlet written in Japanese (Figure 1) about Glover and his importance in 1860s Japanese history, but nothing at all on the many individuals from Japan who lived and worked in Aberdeen and only a passing mention on the Chōshū Five (none of whom had lived or worked in Aberdeen). And as for the Glover house-turned-museum in Bridge of Don, the very house where several of the younger Japanese visitors from Satsuma had lived (having been placed with Glover’s family, as Thomas himself was at that time living in Nagasaki), unfortunately the house/museum was closed down, and its mission, to inform visitors about the importance of this location to Japanese and local history, largely abandoned (presumably due to lack of interest/foot traffic) aside from one forlorn 1997 plaque (Figure 2)—which itself shows funding not by a local UK organization but by Mitsubishi.

Similarly, Oldham, a site of great significance for the three Satsuma visitors in 1865 in their quest to create a “Manchester of the Orient” (see Figure 3 below), appears to have noted this historic visit only in passing, as the Oldham archive had almost nothing on the historic visit.

None of this should be taken to imply that the visitors made no impact at the time. But it seems that, despite the initial furor over the ‘Satsuma Expedition’ in at least some UK papers in 1865 (e.g., see “Our Japanese Visitors” in the August 28, 1865 issue of London & China Telegraph, as cited in Cobbing, 2000, which mentioned their scheduled visit to the Manchester area), most in the UK quickly forgot the existence of these pioneers from Japan. This is not perhaps surprising, as the closer one examines their time abroad, the shorter and less significant it appears. For example, while it is true that 17 representatives of Satsuma plus two from other domains traveled to London in 1865, of whom 14 enrolled as students in UCL, barely one year later only six remained in the UK (all six of whom soon after departed to join Thomas Lake Harris’s Christian cult in the United States), with another two in France; more than half of the original 19 had already returned to Japan. Indeed, 18 out of 19 lived almost all of their lives in Japan and most never had the chance (or inclination) to renew the ties they had forged while in-country.[2]

The most enduring monument to the Japanese students abroad is a stele erected on the grounds of University College London (Figure. 4 and Figure  5). Surely here, at least, was incontrovertible material evidence of their sojourn, a monument for all to see which could attest to the significance of their time spent at UCL and in the UK. On the surface, the monument seems to be an egalitarian one, mentioning all the various students who studied in the UK regardless of their domain origins. However, its erection in 1993, the 130th anniversary of the sojourn of the Chōshū Five, seems to indicate a de-facto focus more on the comparatively famous five Yamaguchi students than on the more diverse group from Kagoshima.

But while the black stone monument was certainly of interest, and achieved a brief moment of fame in its own right when then-Prime Minister Abe Shinzō (himself, not coincidentally, a native of Chōshū/Yamaguchi) visited it during a 2014 state trip to London, it can hardly be said to be a prominent or oft-remarked feature of university life, tucked away as it is in the corner of an open-air cloister. While a few other people did pass through this cloister area while I was there observing, it did not appear to be a very well-traveled area, and none spared a glance for the black monument gathering dust or ventured closer to read its poetic message of praise.

This stands in stark contrast to the pride of place given the various statues commemorating these intrepid individuals in Japan, in particular the imposing bronze monument (Figure 6) in honor of the “Satsuma 19” erected nearly 120 years after their April 1865 departure, which stands just outside Kagoshima Chuo Station. The arrangement of statues is truly monumental, standing 40 feet high and according to Glenn Forbes (2022, p. 99) itself inspired in its visual design by the Shaftesbury Memorial Fountain in Piccadilly Circus, London.

Moreover, Gower Street displays many little signs over this or that door, indicating a famous personage had once lived or stayed there, but 103 Gower Street, despite being probably the most significant single location in the UK for Japanese students to stay, as it had hosted quite a few illustrious future leaders of Japan over the years, had no such marker. In short, these figures appear to have little if any public profile or cultural cache in the UK.

The Queen’s Gallery exhibition in Buckingham Palace provided further evidence that the Japanese individuals who lived and studied in the UK have not been remembered there. Among the various treasures on display, the exhibit featured two items of intriguing provenance, a silver deer and an ornate sake cup (Figure 7). They had been brought by Godai Tomoatsu (1836-1885), a Satsuma retainer and one of the three leaders of the 1865 “Satsuma 19” expedition, in a calculated gamble. While the captioning of the items states only (and somewhat misleadingly) that they were presents from the Satsuma feudal lord for Queen Victoria, in reality it is unlikely either the de jure daimyo of Satsuma or the Queen of England ever laid eyes on them. Instead, the two objects were presented to the British authorities in 1865 as a challenge to the UK’s foreign policy approach to Japan (which was still focused on relations with the Tokugawa Shogunate and did not permit individual domains like Satsuma to make independent overtures).

These two artifacts offered the perfect opportunity to explore, in the context of this exhibit, the complex motivations and positionality of figures like Godai. Unfortunately, the exhibit captioning (Figure 8) made no mention of any of this, simply noting rather obliquely that they were gifts from the daimyō of Satsuma and not explaining the political significance of or challenge represented by this gift-giving. I asked a staff member for more information, yet though she searched for answers throughout the curatorial staff, no one had any further insights to share on these items or why they had been captioned in this (not very satisfying) way. They did provide item numbers so their website could be checked for more information, but upon doing so, I discovered that one had been entirely misclassified (appearing to exist in two places at once!) and the description of the other provided no useful information.

As with so many aspects of history, the ‘what’ (the artifacts themselves, the fact they were given, indirectly, to Queen Victoria) is less important than the why: the motivations of those doing this, not to mention why Godai and others like him are still so famous in Japan and yet essentially unknown in the UK. But before delving deeper into the why, it is worth discussing the ‘who’ in some detail, as well as introducing some key UK-based figures still committed to commemorating Japan’s study abroad pioneers despite the overall attitude of neglect (for more information about the individual members of the Satsuma 19, see Figure 9).

Key researchers on the earliest Japan-UK links of the 1860s: challenges and opportunities

While investigating the state of the field (so to speak) in the UK, I was fortunate enough to discuss the topic of Japan’s earliest students abroad with several individuals who have continued their own research into and commemoration of the Chōshū Five and the Satsuma 19. Others in the UK appear to have been similarly active in this field but establishing contact with them was unfortunately not possible, a fact which itself can perhaps indicate the difficulty of building and maintaining a community of like-minded researchers.

One especially important figure leading the way in researching the 1860s UK-Japan connection, especially between the Manchester area and Kagoshima, is Rebecca Hill, coordinator of the art collections at Gallery Oldham. Under her supervision, that gallery has held multiple events and exhibitions commemorating the Satsuma students, in particular the three older figures from Satsuma who visited Manchester and specifically Oldham in late summer 1865 to negotiate with the Platt brothers (then the largest textile machinery manufacturers in the world) and hire engineers to help set up a cutting-edge mill in Kagoshima.

One of the biggest future challenges (which in a sense is also a big opportunity) will be in connecting those in the UK who are eager to research or commemorate the 1860s students with those already doing so in Japan. There are many more such individuals and groups active in Japan, and sometimes they do reach out to potential counterparts in the UK, as happened in 2015 on the 150th anniversary of the Satsuma 19’s arrival in the UK—it was the Japanese Embassy, as it turns out, who inspired Gallery Oldham to assemble their Satsuma pottery exhibition in the first place (Kufeldt n.d.). But such contact is rare, and seems to be hampered by a lack of knowledge and connection on both sides.

For instance, Toyota sent a crew to do some filming in Oldham early in 2023, exploring the connection between the Platt brothers and nascent industry in Japan, but did not contact anyone locally about their plans. In other words, Toyota sent representatives all the way to Oldham to acquire on-location footage for a project on the Oldham/UK-Toyota/Japan connection, but never reached out to any local historians and researchers, quite possibly because the company was simply unaware any such researchers were active; this meant a potentially valuable point of contact was lost, and those in Oldham essentially had to read about the Toyota visit in the local paper to find out about it (Fitfield 2023, n.p.).

Another key figure in this field in the UK, and an important part of any future network, is Jason James, director-general of the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation. The fact he is not a formal academic is actually an advantage, as it widens the potential network beyond the ivory tower. His own efforts have largely been concentrated on the early history of British visitors to and residents of Japan rather than the other way around. He pointed out that, in general, those in Japan who are interested in history seem more committed to commemorating the early British visitors to Japan compared to the level of commitment for those in the UK wishing to study and remember the earliest Japanese visitors to the UK.

In any case, in the 1860s it is such a small group of visitors/students in and from each country that there is considerable overlap and points of connection, notably with the above-mentioned Thomas Blake Glover (who was instrumental in helping arrange many of the earliest visits of Japanese students to the UK). Indeed, given the level of fame Glover enjoys in Japan, in sharp contrast to how he has been nearly forgotten in the UK and even in his native Aberdeen, it might be fair to call this man, sometimes dubbed the ‘Scottish Samurai’, a national hero…of Japan!

The 1860s Japanese students themselves: famous or forgotten, but why?

What about the earliest Japanese students abroad—many of them teenagers—themselves? What is known about who they were, why they were sent, and their own thoughts about their mission while in the UK? Most of the earliest visitors from Japan were samurai illegally sent (almost exclusively) from the two powerful domains of Satsuma and Chōshū. Many of these figures found later success and in a few cases notoriety in public life back in Japan, parlaying their unique knowledge and skills gained from their study and experiences abroad into instant national prominence.

For example, it is possible to view the career of Satsuma samurai Mori Arinori (1847-1889), just 18 when he arrived in London in 1865, as meteoric and perhaps not unreasonable to jump to the conclusion that his later successes must have been due to his formative experiences in the UK. He was appointed Ambassador to the United States just six years later, while still in his early 20s, and in that capacity was able to help facilitate the Iwakura Mission which arrived later that year before eventually rising to serve as Japan’s first formal Minister of Education. Was it not his own personal study in the UK and other experiences abroad which qualified him, in the eyes of his peers, for higher office? If so, Mori’s career success might be in direct correlation with his unusually lengthy sojourn abroad (longer than almost any of the other Satsuma 19 overall).

In other words, it initially seemed reasonable to assume that studying in the UK was precisely what brought figures like Mori success, and if so, that the longer each spent studying abroad, the greater degree of success they would find after their return. Yet as my investigation of these figures’ lives and activities in the UK proceeded, I was surprised to find that while there does indeed seem to be a modest correlation between time spent abroad and national fame, it actually appears to be in inverse proportion: in general, the shorter the time spent abroad, the more likely each was to become nationally known and enduringly famous in Japan. Even Mori, who might appear to be a counterexample given his quite extensive time abroad and subsequent fame, was a polarizing figure who actually experienced quite a rocky time, culminating in assassination, due to his radical political views and outspokenness.

Soon after his eventual return to Japan, Mori struggled to hold onto official positions due to his radical proposals. He is an early example, par excellence, of the kikoku shijo phenomenon in which returnees to Japan allegedly tend to find it difficult to reassimilate into Japanese society—and society, similarly, finds it difficult to accept the returnees. Mori threw caution to the winds and boldly advocated, in May 1869 (long before the Meiji government dared to pass any such law), for the abolition of the right of samurai to carry swords, and instantly became so controversial he was forced to resign (Cobbing, 2000).

After returning to Japan from his stint in the United States as ambassador, Mori immediately provoked controversy again. His unapologetically progressive proposals (including one advocating that Japan cease using its complicated writing system and use only transliterations into the Roman alphabet), published, among other places, in the journal he helped found, the Meiroku zasshi, once again caused a massive stir, and his allies feared (with tragic foresight, as it happens) that he might be assassinated, so they arranged for him to be sent out of the country as ambassador to China in 1874. Mori, then, unlike Godai (a ‘safer’ figure to venerate since he died in 1885, before he could do much in the way of radical or controversial change), was a polarizing figure from the very beginning, ensuring his historical legacy would always be clouded with detractors.

There were nineteen members of the Satsuma expedition in 1865, but almost all of them have been forgotten more or less entirely; only Mori and Godai have escaped obscurity. How then can we make sense of the complicated legacy of the other seventeen, or attempt to assess the value of their study abroad experiences, if they have been so firmly relegated to ‘bit character’ status in descriptions of this era? As pop culture representations have over time increasingly focused on Godai, the safer of the two most prominent Satsuma members, his star has eclipsed that of all the others, leaving no room for an honest reappraisal of the significance of the Satsuma 19’s mission.

The same issue affects their more famous Chōshū rivals. Only two of the “Chōshū Five” study mission sent in 1863 from what is now Yamaguchi are what we might call “household names” today. Itō Hirobumi (1841-1909) and to a somewhat lesser extent Inoue Kaoru (1836-1915) were the only ones who achieved the pinnacle of lasting fame in Japan, as evidenced by their regular appearance in lists of important figures/names to memorize for junior high school tests in Japanese history; few non-specialists (let alone middle-schoolers!) today could name any of the others. As such, when one hears the term “Chōshū Five” it is these two who spring to mind for most.

And yet these two future statesmen of the highest order spent the least time in the UK, leaving again for Japan only a few months after arriving. Indeed, it is debatable whether Inoue Kaoru can actually even be considered a “student” at all: he never formally studied or paid tuition at, or indeed even registered at UCL, as a careful study of the Japanese student-related materials held at UCL reveals (Choshu and Satsuma Papers, n.d.). At what point did “young man who spent a few months in London not doing much” become “venerable pioneer of study abroad” and should this brief sojourn abroad really qualify someone like Inoue (or Itō, for that matter) as some sort of foreign expert at all?

These two certainly had occasion to bond together, thanks to an incident which occurred right at the beginning of their voyage. They were traveling separately from the other (and now, as then, lesser-known) three, namely[3] Inoue Masaru (1843-1910), Endō Kinsuke (1836-1893) and, despite not being the eldest of the five, the one who appears to have been the de-facto leader of the Chōshū Five, Yamao Yōzō (1837-1917), who was destined to spend the most time of any of them in the UK and as a result is probably the least well-known today. Itō and Inoue learned first-hand the heavy consequences of linguistic misunderstandings, as—unlike their three compatriots, who embarked in relative comfort as passengers to London—Itō and Inoue were put to work on their own ship as deck hands after allegedly attempting to explain they wanted to learn more about ship-building and being misunderstood to say they wanted to be put to work on board (Cobbing, 2000).

Once Itō and Inoue did finally arrive, exhausted after working as part of the ship’s crew the entire time, they stayed for barely three months, although they did exchange plenty of letters with their compatriots still in the UK, notably the group’s leader, Yamao Yōzō (Cobbing, 2000). But what sort of skills, be they linguistic, diplomatic or technical (and there is certainly no evidence that Itō or Inoue were ever able to use again whatever skills working as lowly deckhands had brought them), could someone hope to acquire in such a short time, especially without undertaking any formal course of study? 

Afterlives of the 1860s Japanese students in the UK: who gets a biopic, and why?

What value could the letters and diaries of such figures actually hold to us today, given how little time they really had in the UK? And yet it is typically their perspective, and theirs alone, to which readers and viewers are introduced in historical retellings of this unique moment in history. And even if someone dares to privilege the perspective of one of the other three, as happened in the 2006 movie Chōshū Five, such accounts may face a steep uphill battle, as we shall see below, in their attempt to ‘claw back’ forgotten figures like Yamao into positions of socio-centrality (Fiske & Hartley, 2003, pp. 65-66).

In addition to the transgressive missions by the southwestern domains, the Tokugawa Shogunate also sponsored some legal missions abroad at around the same time. These diplomatic overtures included at least some study efforts, such as the study trip of future Meirokusha members Nishi Amane (1829-1897) and Tsuda Mamichi (1829-1903) to the Netherlands, a mission which departed in 1863 around the same time as the Chōshū Five. They stayed quite a long time in Europe and yet are not particularly well known today, and certainly are not as prominent in the popular imaginary as are fellow future Meirokusha member Mori Arinori, let alone the famous two from the Chōshū Five or Godai, fitting nicely into my overall argument that the longer the period each figure studied abroad, the less likely they are to reach enduring fame in Japan.

If so, then seeking to understand the true value of the Satsuma and Chōshū study abroad experience—in terms of any sort of direct relationship between course of study completed and later prominence—is in a sense futile. Itō and Inoue, the two best-known of the Chōshū Five, also had the shallowest and shortest experience in the UK. Yet despite these valid doubts about the fitness of Itō and Inoue as representatives of the study abroad experience, storytellers—especially those working with visual culture in some fashion—who wish to challenge the centrality of these two face a steep uphill battle. This is because of what John Fiske (2011, p. 30) calls the ‘recognition effect’ (in which seeing something too different from what we expect to see jolts viewers out of the story). This is an important principle governing the production of visual retellings of history, as the recognition effect trumps viewer concerns over historical accuracy. A classic example is Braveheart (1995), portraying Scottish hero William Wallace: audiences had a clear expectation in their minds of what Scottish warriors looked like, a visual stereotype which inaccurately featured kilts (which were in fact not worn then) and so forth, and the filmmakers decided not to jolt audiences by showing them a more accurate depiction.

The consequences of violating this recognition effect could be severe, as the creators of the 2006 biopic Chōshū Five discovered. Most people, historians and laypeople alike, associate that group of five students almost exclusively with Itō and Inoue, and yet this historical drama violated expectations by instead focusing mostly on two of the remaining three. This was both accurate and reasonable in the context of the filmmakers’ putative desire to tell the entire years-long history of each of the five during their stay in the UK, not only the few months Itō and Inoue were present. The filmmakers signaled this ambition by casting their main star in the production, Matsuda Ryūhei, as Yamao Yōzō, probably the least-known of the five precisely because he spent the longest time abroad. While this goal may be admirable, the movie’s violation of the recognition effect likely did not help its box office take—which ended up too low to be recorded for posterity.[4]

Similarly, of the 19 mostly Satsuma samurai dispatched by that domain in 1865, the one who has proved most enduringly famous, at least in Japan, is Godai Tomoatsu. This is evidenced, for example, by the high-profile hagiographic biopic Tengaramon (“Godai - The Wunderkind” in English), released in late 2020 and starring young heartthrob Miura Haruma in the lead role. Godai was already well-known (especially in Osaka and his native Kagoshima) prior to the release of the film, so it can safely be said that by hagiographically valorizing his contributions to Japanese history, the filmmakers were not risking any violation of the recognition effect here.

Godai’s own diary, Kaikoku nikki, is not particularly informative, following then-current diary writing conventions in largely confining its remarks to the weather.[5] But his fellow Satsuma 19 member Hatakeyama Yoshinari later expanded on the 1865 experiences their group had in greater depth; his diary is probably the most important source on the actual activities of the group. Playing it safe paid off, earning the film 900 million yen at the box office (Kinema junpō, 2022), a very impressive result for an independent film not associated with a major studio especially considering the double delay in its release, first due to the COVID-19 pandemic and then to the shocking mid-2020 suicide of its star Miura.

Moreover, Tengaramon impressed many readers of Japan’s most prominent film magazine, Kinema junpō, who voted it the number one Japanese movie of its year in their 94th “Best Ten” Awards (Oricon, 2021). None of the other members of the Satsuma 19, not even the very high-profile future statesman Mori Arinori, has so prominent a biopic to his name. It is a zero-sum narrative focused on elevating Godai to national hero status, partly because of his supposedly formative experiences in the UK, and one which makes very little effort to introduce his compatriots (the controversial Mori Arinori, for example, isn’t even a named character in the film).

Popular cultural depictions of Godai resemble those of Itō in their hagiographic tone and in sidestepping the inconvenient detail of how short a stay each actually had in the UK. Indeed, Tengaramon itself enhanced the reputations of both. Itō—though there exists to my knowledge no evidence of any meaningful direct interactions between him and Godai at this (or any other) time—is a major role in Tengaramon. Much like Itō, Godai actually may have the dubious distinction of having spent the least amount of time in the UK of the entire group dispatched by Satsuma.

Moreover, Godai did not go as a ‘student’ at all (nor did he enroll anywhere as such) but as a diplomat. He was already an adult of about 30 when he visited, unlike many of his far younger and more impressionable fellows, making the potential impact of his experiences on the formation of his identity significantly less (especially compared to those who essentially grew up in the UK, like Nagasawa, or came of age there, like Mori). It is therefore ironic that of all the Satsuma “students” abroad it should be Godai who has emerged as the key figure in the public and historical imaginary.

Conclusion: Why are Godai, Inoue and Itō specifically still remembered today?

The final question is perhaps the most important of all: why would the length of time a given individual spent ‘studying’ abroad be in an inverse correlation with subsequent fame? Existing research, especially the work of Andrew Cobbing (1998; 2000), can provide a comprehensive factual account of the movements of these students (Cobbing’s work, which draws heavily on existing Japanese-language scholarship and thus can provide a good if indirect summary of that body of work as well, is still the definitive English-language source today). But Cobbing did not (nor did he seek to) provide an answer to this question. He was perhaps uninterested in the issue of fame, as he never acknowledges the existence of any such inverse relationship between time abroad and national prominence.[6]

Thanks to my wide-ranging examination of the ways Japan’s earliest students abroad have been remembered (and forgotten), I can offer a speculative explanation for this inverse relationship. First, it is important to note that what I have identified is only a correlation; I am not arguing that there is an explicit causal link between shorter stays abroad and greater fame later in life. It may be, for example, that the individuals who returned to Japan more quickly than their fellow students abroad did so precisely because they were already influential or powerful in some way, such that their absence from Japan could no longer be endured.

In such a view, those who conversely spent the longest abroad did so, one might assume, because no one was clamoring for them to return to Japan—maybe they lingered in Europe because, in essence, they did not matter. But there are good reasons to reject this seemingly plausible view. In reality, as Cobbing (1997) points out, most of those who returned to Japan did so because funding from their home domain had been cut off: they had been abandoned by their domains. Only those influential few whose study and other activities abroad were considered a top priority could expect to keep receiving financial support, and thus, those who stayed longer were presumably expected to contribute more and rise in prominence after their return.

It seems we must look elsewhere to explain the correlation between a rapid return to Japan and subsequent fame. Above I briefly mentioned the outsized influence of the cultist Thomas Lake Harris on the Japanese students who had remained longest in the UK; eventually, almost a dozen (mostly from Satsuma) left Europe in late 1867 to join Harris at his commune in the US. I suspect that those who returned to Japan prior to late 1867 ended up generally reaching higher levels of fame not because of the intrinsic value of their study abroad experiences (which were much shorter and, one imagines, less intense than the cultists’ own experiences!) but at least in part because by quickly returning to Japan, they avoided the shadow of suspicion these cultists encountered once they returned due to early Meiji-era Japan’s widespread and enduring distrust of Christianity, a distrust which may survive to some extent into the present.

Pop culture retellings of Japanese history tend to avoid controversial topics and figures, and thus a historical figure who had joined a cult, particularly after the shocking actions, in 1995, of Japan’s own most infamous cult Aum Shinrikyō, might have a greatly reduced profile in cinema and other mediums. The most prominent Japanese member associated with Harris’s cult was Mori Arinori, and while he did ultimately rise high, career-wise, after his return to Japan, his ascent was (as noted above) far from smooth, ending in assassination in 1889, due to allegedly religiously-motivated disrespect shown two years earlier during a visit to Ise Shrine.

To this “cult” explanation I will add one common-sense speculation: the process of becoming a national hero in Japan would naturally favor those who spent the longest in Japan and thus who were in a position to invest more time and energy in key domestic relationships. While the specialized skills and knowledge accrued by the students who spent the longest in the UK were undoubtedly greater than that of those whose stay was brief, the specific abilities (such as Chōshū native Yamao’s mastery of shipbuilding, acquired over years of careful study in Scotland, or Satsuma son Nagasawa’s extensive knowledge of winemaking) those long sojourners acquired would not necessarily attract the attention of the general public, or fire their collective imagination, in the way that concrete achievements by short sojourners like Itō or Inoue could.

It is perhaps an obvious point, but those who returned to Japan most quickly, like the most famous three ‘students’ abroad (Godai, Itō and Inoue), could still claim the impressive and then exceedingly rare mantle of someone with experience abroad, yet were also in the best position to build relationships at home and make themselves politically useful. For example, Itō and Inoue cut their time abroad short and raced back to Chōshū in an attempt to stop their domain from attacking foreign ships. This attempt was unsuccessful, but nonetheless valuable: they had announced themselves as moderates and forged relationships over the course of their negotiations, and yet could also continue to claim the unusual distinction of foreign experiences. Godai, similarly, returned to Kagoshima only a few months after having traveled to Europe and was able to oversee personally the formation of the mill there, all the while making connections both domestically and internationally which were to prove useful in his subsequent commercial undertakings in Osaka.

Put more simply, those who rushed back to Japan after a brief stint abroad were both intriguingly exotic and uncontroversial. They were not gone long enough to do anything particularly problematic (like join a cult) in terms of their subsequent or posthumous reputations, but still had an appealing veneer of having seen and experienced the wider world (regardless of how much they had truly absorbed from these experiences). Perhaps it might also be argued that those figures’ “foreignness” (perceived or actual) would also be less than, say, the radical Mori.

Godai specifically had one advantage in his apotheosis as national hero: he died rather young, in 1885, after his major accomplishment in establishing the Osaka Chamber of Commerce but before he could be too deeply embroiled in divisive national politics. Indeed, the two most prominent members of the Satsuma 19 (Godai and Mori) both died in their 40s, far younger than most of their fellows.[7] Itō, by contrast, became one of Japan’s most prominent early statesmen but lived and worked in public life long enough to become quite a divisive figure in his own right. After serving several terms as Prime Minister, he was eventually dispatched to the protectorate of Korea as Resident-General and was assassinated soon after this in 1909—a deadly confirmation, as with Mori, of the real-life dangers of controversy.

In conclusion, my research project in the UK provided fascinating insights into the potential reasons certain Japanese figures, rather than others, achieved a high level of prominence in Japan’s historical imaginary. Visiting a wide range of archives and sites of public memory also allowed me to discover the degree to which these Japanese pioneers of study abroad have been largely forgotten in the UK. Had I visited only one or two archives or examined only written documents without supplementary sources among the cinema and material culture, it may not have been quite so clear the extent to which these famous national heroes of Japan had failed to make a lasting (multi-generational) impression on their hosts. The broad scope of the project and the variety of mediums examined also lends a degree of confidence to my speculative conclusions about the reasons for what I have called the inverse relationship between the length of time a particular person spent studying abroad and that person’s subsequent prominence in the national conversation about Japanese history.

References

2021 nen nihon eiga gaikoku eiga kōgyō shūnyū ichiran [List of Box Office Results for Japanese and Foreign Films of 2021] (2022). Kinema junpō, 1888.

Choshu and Satsuma Ppapers. (n.d.). University College London Digital Archive. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/digital-collections/collections/records/choshu-satsuma.

Cobbing, A. (1997). The Japanese experience in Britain, 1862-1876: Japan’s cultural discovery of the Victorian world in the early years of overseas travel [Doctoral dissertation, University of London].

Cobbing, A. (1998). The Japanese discovery of Victorian England: Early travel encounters in the far west. Surrey, UK: Japan Library.

Cobbing, A. (2000). The Satsuma students in Britain: Japan's early search for the essence of the West. Surrey, UK: Japan Library.

Fiske, J. and Hartley, J. (2003). Reading television, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.

Fiske, J. (2011). Television culture, 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.

Fitfield, J. (2023, March 10). Hydrogen-powered Toyota light show celebrates Oldham link. The Oldham Times. https://www.theoldhamtimes.co.uk/news/23372232.hydrogen-powered-toyota-light-show-celebrates-oldham-link/.

Forbes, G. (2022). A voyage in time. Kagoshima Junshin Joshi Tanki Daigaku Kenkyū Kiyō, 52(9), 99-112.

Gibson, M. (Director). (1995). Braveheart [Film]. Icon Productions.

Godai, T. (1962). Kaikoku nikki (T. Okubo, Trans.). In Godai Tomoatsu no ōkō to, kare no taiō shuki ‘Kaikoku nikki’ ni tsuite [Regarding Godai Tomoatsu’s journey to Europe and his memoir Kaikoku nikki, written whille there], Shien [The Journal of Historical Studies], 22(2), 20-41. 

Greater Manchester Japan Centre. (n.d.) Manchester and Japan: A summary of historical connections. Manuscript found at Oldham Local Studies Library.

Igarashi S. (Director). (2007). Chōshū Faibu [Chosyu (sic) Five] [Film]. Global Pictures.

Japanese Students at UCL. (n.d.). London Remembers, n.d. https://www.londonremembers.com/memorials/japanese-students-at-ucl.

Kufeldt, Z. (n.d.). Oldham’s incredible mark on Japanese industry. Gallery Oldham, n.d. https://galleryoldham.org.uk/oldhams-incredible-mark-on-japanese-industry/.

Miura Haruma san shūen ‘Tengaramon’ ga ‘KineJun’ dokusha senshutsu nihon eiga ichi-i [‘Tengaramon’, in which Mr. Haruma Miura starred, voted by Kinema junpō readers as the number one Japanese movie of the year]. (2021, February 44). Oricon News. https://www.oricon.co.jp/news/2183593/.  

Tanaka, M. (Director) (2020). Tengaramon [Godai – The Wunderkind] [Film]. Creators Union.

Notes

[1] This article emerged from a research project entitled “Beyond the Chōshū Five: Diachronic analysis of the Reputations of Japanese Students Abroad in 1860’s Great Britain” funded by the Margaret Thatcher Japan Foundation. Without their support, I could not have hoped to accomplish my research goals (which included travel to archives and key sites not only in London but also in far-flung corners of the country, for example Oldham and Aberdeen) while living in the United Kingdom. I am grateful to the staff and faculty of the University of Buckingham who provided desk space and various other kinds of assistance. From the foundation itself, Peter Thompson was unfailingly helpful, as was the local liaison Anne Matsuoka.

[2] Only one of the 19, namely Nagasawa Kana(y)e (1852-1936, both the youngest and the longest-lived of all 24 of the earliest Japanese students abroad in the UK, who essentially grew up in Scotland), never actually moved back to Japan at all. Instead, he settled in the U.S. permanently, becoming the ‘Wine King of California’; he may (according to Cobbing 2000, Chapter 4 note 52) have visited Aberdeen again a few years after his two-year stay there ended, but the evidence is inconclusive. Few others, not even those with extensive subsequent experiences abroad such as Mori Arinori, appear to have had occasion or inclination to make ‘renewal of ties’ journeys back to the UK.

[3] Identifying Bakumasu-era figures by their name can be more difficult than it may appear due to the frequency with which major figures of the day tended to change their official names (and even more so when assuming an alias because they were attempting to leave the country illegally). Thus, to avoid confusion, all the names given here and throughout are the “final” names by which each of these figures is (now, at least) primarily known.

[4] The Motion Picture Producers Association of Japan (Eiren) only publishes box office results for films which earn a minimum of one billion yen (roughly 10 million USD).

[5] See for example Godai, Kaikoku nikki, pp. 30-31 (entries for late July and August 1865), all of which are short (no more than six or seven lines, some barely more than a single line) and begin by announcing the day of the week, followed by a brief comment on the weather. Of all the experiences and encounters Godai had at that time, the one which seemed to have the greatest impact on him, based on the frequent mention in his diary, was with the French aristocrat (Charles comte des Cantons de) Montblanc, with whom he later launched a (failed) business venture. 

[6] To be fair, Cobbing does muse (2000, p. 123) that the acquisition of advanced skills and a range of experiences—both of which were beyond the comprehension of most people in Meiji Japan—may have become an obstacle in the subsequent careers of the especially well-studied, leading to their pigeonholing into specialized technician jobs.

[7] A few members of the Satsuma 19 died even younger than Godai (who died at age 49) or Mori (aged 41 at the time of his assassination). For example, Ainoshin Togo died at age 26 while fighting during the Boshin War in 1868, and the unofficial scribe for the group, Hatakeyama Yoshinari, died at age 34, but it remains striking that Godai and Mori, the two most famous members of this group, both died on average much younger than their relatively obscure fellow Satsuma 19 members, whose average life expectancy was 55 overall (Forbes 2022, pp. 111-112).