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Views
on Yoshida Shoin
Like his mentor, Kido held an ambivalent view of the West. He
ultimately wanted the emancipation of Japan from fear of colonialization
and also from unfair treaties that were put upon Japan.
Kido was
regarded as one of the great students of Yoshida’s private
academy – Shoka Sunjuku – though his time of study
would have been brief.
“Shoin’s
loyalist thought carried with it a concept of social revolution.”
Shoin preached the necessity for a grass-roots hero to arise
to install a merit bureaucracy to create an egalitarian army,
and to send talented students abroad to study. This was “an
anti-feudal program which Kido ultimately carried out.”
He tried
to protect Shoin from the wrath of the Bakufu by screening out
his more intemperate letters and mourned the death of Shoin
by Bakufu executioners in 1859. He saw to it that Shoin was
reburied with honor at Wakabayashi in Edo. (date unspecified)
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