Ryotaro Shiba
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Ryotaro Shiba (司馬遼太郎 Shiba Ryōtarō), born Tei'ichi Fukuda (福田 定一 Fukuda Tei'ichi, 1923-1996), is best known for his novels and essays based on historical events in Japan.
Shiba studied Mongolian at the Osaka School of Foreign Languages (the present Osaka University of Foreign Studies) and started out his career as a journalist at Sankei Shimbun, which is one of the major newspapers in Japan. SHIBA became a writer and wrote about the dramatic change Japan went through in the Edo and Meiji era. Some of his works are Kunitori Monogatari, Ryoma ga Yuku, Saka no ue no Kumo. He also wrote many essays including Kaidou wo Yuku. He is widely known for his original and unique analysis of historical events and many people in Japan have read at least one of his works.
One of Shiba's best known works, Ryoma ga Yuku is a historical novel about a samurai called Sakamoto Ryoma who helped lead Japan to the Meiji Restoration (Meiji Ishin), when different values from the Western culture was introduced and Japan made a dramatic change. The late Edo period was a very confused time when the country split in to two sides. Japan had banned international trade for over four hundred years and had been isolated from other countries. As a result, the people had developed a strong fear for foreigners. In the Edo period, the Japanese government, which was being led by the Tokugawa family, had agreed to open up trade to the United States and the European countries. However, many people were against this and they started a movement called Sonno-Joi. They believed that they should stand up and fight the foreigners to protect their country. The emperor of Japan was robbed of its political power by the Tokugawa family, but was still considered as the holy symbol of Japan. In order to protect the country, the Sonnou-Joi, or the opposing group, wanted to give back political powers to the Emperor and overthrow the Tokugawa family. The two opposing sides caused confusion and killings occurred frequently.
The main character, Sakamoto Ryoma starts out as a Sonno-Joi, but he begins to realize the need for the people in Japan to realize how much stronger other countries have gotten in that four hundred years of national isolation. Japan was almost powerless compared to the technology and well developed industry of the West. He believed that Japan need to take in Western culture to develop into a country which can stand equally among other countries.ja:司馬遼太郎 zh:司马辽太郎