Kido Takayoshi

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Image:Shougiku 07 kengou katsura kogorou .jpg Kido Takayoshi (木戸孝允, August 11 1833 - May 26 1877), also referred as Kido Koin was a Japanese politician during the Late Tokugawa shogunate and the Meiji Restoration. During the shogunate he was known as Katsura Kogorō (桂小五郎). He used the alias Niibori Matsusuke (新堀松輔 Niibori Matsusuke) when he worked against the shogun.

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Biography

He was born in Chōshū (present-day Yamaguchi prefecture) as the second son of Wada Masakage (和田昌景), a clan doctor. Together with Saigo Takamori and Okubo Toshimichi, he is counted among what was known as the Ishin-no-Sanketsu (維新の三傑), which means, roughly, "three nobles of the restoration". His younger sister's grandson was Tokyo politician Koichi Kido (木戸幸一).

He was a representative of the Sonnō jōi movement in Chōshū. He represented Chōshū in the Satsuma-Chōshū alliance, or Satchōdōmei (薩長同盟).

During the Meiji Restoration, he fell in love with a geisha by the name of Ikumatsu, and the two entered the times of the Restoration as a married couple.

He was a member of the Iwakura mission that toured America and Europe to study Western forms of government.

During the height of the southwestern revolt (also known as Satsuma Rebellion) of 1877 (led by Saigo Takamori), he died of natural causes. He was 43.

His diary reveals an intense internal conflict between his loyalty to his home domain, Choshyu (Chōshū), and the greater interest of the country. He wrote often of having to fight rumors at home that he had betrayed his old friends; the idea of a nation was still relatively new in Japan and so the majority of samurai cared more for securing privelages for their own domain.

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