つうか竜馬は軍国主義の亡霊とかｗｗｗ野田さんｗｗｗ
Icons October 28, 2010, 5:00PM EST
A Samurai Reformer Inspires a Nation Adrift
In Japan, Ryoma has become a cultural touchstone for everyone from the new Prime Minister to Sapporo executives
By Adam Le
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_45/b4202012176912.htm
From Prime Minister Naoto Kan to Sapporo Beer executives, many in Japan are invoking the legacy of Ryoma Sakamoto, the 19th century samurai who helped modernize the nation's government and economy. It's hard to imagine what Ryoma (known in Japan by his given name) would make of his country's present-day challenges, ranging from a stagnated economy, recently overtaken by China as the world's second biggest, to a political system that produces short-lived governments.Yet that hasn't stopped Japanese leaders from co-opting the much-admired maverick, who helped pave the way for the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868. Kan mentioned Ryoma in a speech on June 8, the day he became Premier, drawing comparisons between his new Cabinet and the militia groups of the samurai era. Facing an economy saddled with falling consumer prices, rising debt, and an aging population, Kan pledged that his party would "take on issues with fearless courage."
The Ryoma mystique, which has inspired at least eight TV series, is especially alluring today given that "Japan is suffering from many problems," says Masaaki Noda, a professor at Kwansei Gakuin University. "Ryoma has been exploited over and over again in society, for Japan's militarism, and his ghost still remains."
Ryoma mania is also a big business. Visitors to Ryoma's birthplace of Kochi prefecture, on the southern island of Shikoku, rose 71 percent in the first half of this year, to 2.4 million, from a year earlier after broadcaster NHK started airing its popular Ryoma Den drama in January. Interest in the samurai has added 40.9 billion yen ($502 million) to Kochi's economy, or about 1.8 percent of the surrounding region's gross regional product, the Bank of Japan said in June.
Sapporo Holdings, Japan's fourth-biggest brewer, in September started nationwide sales of a beer called Oi! Ryoma. It sold all 480,000 cans of the limited edition of its black-label beer featuring a cartoon depiction of Ryoma, says company spokesman Katsuhito Ogawa. Nationwide, the company hopes to sell 1.2 million cans of the beer this fall. Daihatsu Motor (TM) has used an actor playing Ryoma in a commercial for its Tanto Exe car.
Born the son of a samurai in 1835, Ryoma's efforts to modernize Japan included his Eight-Point Program, which outlined plans to transform it into a constitutional monarchy, institute a foreign policy, and regulate trade. That formed the basis for the Charter Oath, the framework for Japan's first constitution in the Meiji Restoration, according to the Ryoma Sakamoto Memorial Museum website.
"Almost the entire Restoration program is contained within this program of Ryoma's," writes Marius B. Jansen, author of Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration. "Its language would be echoed in the Charter Oath of 1868." Before he was murdered at age 33 by still-unknown assassins loyal to the shogun, Ryoma established Japan's first trading company, which led to the creation of the Mitsubishi Group. He is also regarded as the father of the imperial navy.
"Ryoma said that if Japan didn't unify as one country, it couldn't respond to the West," says Kenshiro Mori, the director of the Ryoma Memorial Museum in Kochi. "There are parallels between the confusion of that period and what's happening today."
The bottom line: Meiji era reformer Ryoma Sakamoto has become a source of inspiration to Japanese in tough economic and political times.
Le is a reporter for Bloomberg News in Osaka.
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For immediate release: Dec. 13, 2000
http://www.princeton.edu/pr/news/00/q4/1213-jansen.htm
Editors: A photo and a list of scholars who can comment on his work are available.
Professor Marius Berthus Jansen, scholar of Japanese history, dies
Princeton, N.J. -- Marius Berthus Jansen, world-renown scholar and Emeritus Professor of Japanese History at Princeton University, died on Sunday, Dec. 10, at his home in Princeton, N.J.
Born in the Netherlands in 1922, Jansen grew up in Massachusetts and received his undergraduate education at Princeton, where he majored in European history of the Renaissance and Reformation eras. He was a member of the Class of 1944, earning his A.B. degree in 1943. He graduated summa cum laude and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. Following three years of military service devoted to the study of Japan, and including service in Okinawa and the initial year of the Allied Occupation of Japan, he turned his interests from European to Japanese history. He studied for his doctorate at Harvard University under the direction of John K. Fairbank and Edwin O. Reischauer, who was later U.S. ambassador to Japan.Jansen began his teaching career at the University of Washington in 1950 and moved to Princeton in 1959 as professor in the departments of history and Oriental studies. He was one of a small group of specialists in the study of Japan who deepened the American understanding of Japanese history and helped introduce Japan into college and university curricula. His students in turn fanned out to develop Japanese studies throughout the United States.
At Princeton, where he received the Howard Behrman Award for excellence in teaching in the humanities, Jansen was a devoted member of the history department, as well as the director of the Program in East Asian Studies (1962-68), and the first chairman of the newly formed Department of East Asian Studies (1969-72). He was a stimulating undergraduate teacher and a demanding, incisive advisor for generations of graduate students in East Asian history. Upon his retirement from Princeton University in 1992, Jansen was named Emeritus Professor of Japanese History.
Throughout his career, Jansen was active on committees for learned societies, for the Fulbright Commission; in the Association for Asian Studies, to which he was elected President in 1977; and for the Japan Foundation, whose American Committee he chaired for 17 years. He was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and was recognized for his contributions to Japanese studies and Japanese-American relations by the Japan Foundation, the city of Osaka, the Japan Society of New York, and the Emperor of Japan, who conferred on him the Order of the Sacred Treasure in 1985. His long service and many contributions to the study of Japan and its culture were recognized in his appointment to the Japan Academy in Spring 1999 and the award of the Prize for Distinguished Cultural Merit (Bunka Korosho) later that year. Jansen was the first non-Japanese to receive this award.
In addition to many articles in both English and Japanese, Jansen was the author and editor of more than twenty books, including: The Japanese and Sun Yat Sen (1954), Japan and China, from War to Peace, 1894-1972 (1975), and Japan and its World: Two Centuries of Change (1981). Perhaps the best known of his books is Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration (1961). This was devoted to the turbulent period of Japan's turn to the West in the mid-nineteenth century. It has also enjoyed wide reading in its Japanese translation, and made him a celebrity on the island of Shikoku, where Ryoma grew up. Professor Jansen's eyesight had been failing for some time, but he continued to research, write, and edit. His latest book, The Making of Modern Japan (2000), was published a week before his death, affording him great satisfaction.
Jansen is survived by his wife of 52 years, Jean Hamilton Jansen, a longtime faculty member of the Princeton Day School; a daughter, Maria Christine McGale, and her husband Gerard, of Garwood, N.J.; three grandchildren, Claire, Emily and Mark; a brother Johannes Jan Jansen, his wife Martha, and their two daughters, Anne and Catherine, of North Andover, Mass.; Mary Cabiness Jansen of Austin, Texas, the widow of his brother John, and nephews John, Tyler, Mark, David and Andrew; and a sister-in-law, Dorothy Hamilton of Fresno, Calif.
The funeral service will be held on Saturday, Dec. 16, at the Nassau Presbyterian Church, 61 Nassau St., Princeton, at 1:00 p.m.
In lieu of flowers, contributions may be sent to a scholarship fund in the name of Marius B. Jansen at the East Asian Studies Program, 211 Jones Hall, Princeton, N.J. 08544-1008.
A memorial and appreciation of Marius Jansen's work will be held at Princeton University early in 2001. Details will be announced later.
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