Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 6.djvu/292

 is said to have cut off his own head in order to prevent identification. He and Kusunoki Masashige are the popular heroes of that period of rampant disloyalty.

Nobunaga (1534—1582), one of the three greatest generals of Japan, was a Tōkaidō chieftain of Taira extraction. In the general anarchy then existing, he followed the fashion and made war on his neighbours, gradually acquiring great power. He supported the claim of Yoshiaki to the Ashikaga shogunate, but in 1573 deposed him and took the power into his own hands. Not being a Minamoto, he could not be Shōgun, and his lack of administrative power prevented his victories from having any lasting value, so that he never exercised the control that was enjoyed by his successors, Hideyoshi and Iyeyasu. He encouraged Christianity, but merely because he hated the Buddhists. He waged remorseless war upon the sacerdotal soldiers of the great monasteries, and his destruction of Hiyei-zan and Hongwan-ji was accompanied by indiscriminate slaughter. His aim in life was a noble one, to rehabilitate the Imperial power, and he looked upon the great strongholds of Buddhism as the chief obstacle to this consummation. He was assassinated by one of his captains, who objected to being the subject of a practical joke. (See the Index.) Okuho Toshimitsu (1830—1878), a member of the Satsuma clan and one of the most prominent of its reformers, became, after the overthrow of the shogunate, a leading organiser of the new Imperial government. He was the great interpreter of foreign ideas, and made the foreign policy of Japan his special field. His ideal was a strongly centralised government—a personal government—which could force the reforms it deemed necessary. He was active in suppressing the rebellion of his clan, and within a few months was assassinated by some of the soldiers of the defeated province.

Okuma, Count (1837—), made a specialty of financial measures in the reorganised Imperial government. In 1889 an attempt was made to assassinate him, his leg being blown off by dynamite. (For other details, see the Index. )

Saigo Takamori (1827—1877), Kido, and Okubo were considered the greatest of the early reformers. Saigo was a prominent retainer in the Satsuma clan, and in the development of his career it became evident that it was against the Tokugawa control rather than for "enlightened government" that he had battled. He commanded the Imperial forces in the war with the shogunate in 1868, and advocated war with Korea in 1873. Disappointed in this and finding himself unable to follow in the paths of the more radical