From the Practice Hall to the Cabinet: The Two Lives of Katsura Kogorō

Kido Takayoshi (1833–1877), the architect of the institutional design of the Meiji state, had a second name. Katsura Kogorō. Under it he was a Chōshū loyalist who narrowly escaped the Shinsengumi raid at the Ikedaya in 1864. The same man lived two lives.

Head Student at the Renpeikan

Katsura entered Saitō Yakurō's Renpeikan dōjō in Edo in 1852, at nineteen, and trained in the Shintō Munen-ryū school of swordsmanship. He advanced rapidly and was appointed head student — the senior figure directing the several hundred regular trainees — by 1856. The Renpeikan was one of the three great Edo dōjō, and the head-student position was the apex of a substantial pyramid. He was rated highly as a contemporary swordsman; there is the famous, lightly documented tradition that the Satsuma swordsman Kirino Toshiaki once faced him and could not score.

The Turn to Politics

From the Ansei Purge of 1858 onward, Katsura's center of gravity shifted from swordsmanship to political work. He was elevated into the Chōshū domain's senior political circles, and was tasked with intelligence gathering and inter-domain negotiation in Kyoto. He narrowly survived the Shinsengumi raid at the Ikedaya in 1864, and two years later was the principal Chōshū-side architect of the Satsuma-Chōshū Alliance. The trajectory from swordsman to political operator was standard for the period; what was unusual about Katsura was that the same individual carried both head-student-grade sword talent and Sangi-grade political talent.

Institutional Design in the New State

After 1868, taking the name Kido Takayoshi, he carried out institutional design at the center of the Meiji government. The four major structural reforms — the Five Charter Oath, the abolition of feudal registers, the abolition of the domains, and the land-tax reform — were either drafted by him or significantly shaped by him. He joined the Iwakura Mission in 1871 to study Western institutions on the ground, and on his return opposed Saigō's proposal to invade Korea in favor of domestic consolidation. Across the four life stages of swordsman, political operator, administrator, and internationalist, he died of illness in 1877 — the first of the three great Restoration figures to die.

"He who would accomplish great things must begin with small ones."