The Hagi Rebellion — Maebara Issei and the Chōshū Shizoku Uprising Against the Sword Abolition Edict

The Hagi Rebellion (Hagi no Ran) was a shizoku revolt raised against the Meiji government in October 1876 (Meiji 9) at Hagi in Nagato Province (present-day Hagi City, Yamaguchi Prefecture), led by Maebara Issei, reckoned one of the great statesmen of the Restoration, and joined by shizoku of the old Chōshū domain (Nagato Province). Acting in concert with the Shinpūren Rebellion in Kumamoto and the Akizuki Rebellion of the former Akizuki domain, which broke out at the same time, it counts among the series of disaffected-shizoku revolts that led on to the following year's Satsuma Rebellion. In that the "Sword Abolition Edict" served as its direct trigger, it is an affair that symbolizes the epochal turning point surrounding the very survival of the sword and the samurai.

**Background: Maebara Issei, a Statesman of the Restoration**

Maebara Issei was a samurai from the Chōshū domain who studied at Yoshida Shōin's Shōka Sonjuku academy and, alongside Takasugi Shinsaku and Kido Takayoshi, threw himself into the late-Edo movements to revere the emperor, expel the barbarians, and overthrow the shogunate—a man of true merit in the Restoration. He also distinguished himself in the Boshin War and, in the new Meiji government, held such high posts as state councilor and senior vice-minister of military affairs. He was counted among the "Ten Great Men of the Restoration."

Yet Maebara came into conflict with the policies of the domain-clique mainstream led by Kido Takayoshi, and grew deeply dissatisfied with the new government's headlong drive for modernization and its disregard for the treatment of the shizoku. He was particularly incensed that the shizoku, who had been the driving force of the Restoration, were having their very reason for existence denied by the introduction of conscription and their economic foundations stripped away by the abolition of hereditary stipends. Resigning his office and returning to his home of Hagi, Maebara became a gathering point for former Chōshū samurai who shared his discontent with the government.

**The Sword Abolition Edict as Trigger**

In March 1876, the government issued the "Sword Abolition Edict" (Haitōrei)—a Grand Council of State proclamation forbidding the wearing of swords except by those in full court dress, military personnel, police, and the like. The sword was not merely a weapon but the soul of the samurai, the symbol of his status and pride. The ban on wearing swords was a measure that stripped the shizoku of their very identity as warriors, and when the abolition of hereditary stipends followed as a further blow, the fury of disaffected shizoku across the country reached its peak.

Triggered by this edict, the Shinpūren (Keishin-tō) Rebellion first erupted in Kumamoto Prefecture on 24 October 1876. In response to this revolt—in which shizoku deprived of their swords rose up, sword and spear in hand, on the basis of divine will—the Akizuki Rebellion by former Akizuki-domain samurai broke out in Fukuoka Prefecture on 27 October.

**The Uprising and Its Course**

On receiving word of the Shinpūren and Akizuki uprisings, Maebara Issei finally resolved to rise. On the night of 27 October 1876, Maebara raised the banner of the "Junkoku-gun" (Army of Martyrs) at the former domain school, the Meirinkan, and rallied around two hundred shizoku. The party's name—"to die a martyr for one's country"—embodied the tragic resolve of warriors being left behind by the times.

What Maebara and his men counted upon was the rising of Saigō Takamori, who in Kagoshima still commanded latent power. Were Saigō to join and take up arms, the anti-government forces could expand to a nationwide scale. But contrary to Maebara's hopes, the cooperation of Saigō could not be obtained. Isolated, the Junkoku-gun tried to advance eastward along the San'in road to make a direct appeal to the government, failed, and was forced to turn back to Hagi.

Once government forces equipped with modern arms and organization—garrison troops of the Hiroshima garrison and others—were deployed, the ragtag Junkoku-gun had no means to resist. Little more than a week after the uprising began, the revolt was pacified by the government army.

**Outcome: The Execution of Maebara and His Men**

After the suppression, Maebara Issei was captured. On 3 December 1876, proceedings were opened at the Hagi provisional court, but the opportunity to plead their case before the government, which had supposedly been promised at the outset, was not granted. Eight ringleaders and officers of the Junkoku-gun were sentenced to death, and the sentences were carried out that same day. Thus one of the great statesmen who had rendered immense service to the Restoration fell at the execution ground as a rebel against the new government.

**Historical Significance**

The Hagi Rebellion, together with the Shinpūren and Akizuki rebellions, was a shizoku revolt that erupted with the Sword Abolition Edict as its direct trigger. What these revolts shared was rage at being deprived of the sword—the soul of the samurai—and they were a final resistance against the dismantling of the very status of the warrior in the name of modernization.

Yet the martial power of ragtag shizoku was shattered utterly before a modern government army organized through conscription. The failure of these revolts made plain to all that the age of the old-style warrior who relied on the sword had come entirely to an end. The series of shizoku revolts of 1876, beginning with the Hagi Rebellion, is regarded as the direct prelude to the Satsuma Rebellion of the following year, 1877—the greatest and last of the shizoku revolts, raised in support of Saigō Takamori. Embodying the rage and sorrow of warriors deprived of their swords, this affair vividly inscribes the process by which the age of the Japanese sword and the samurai drew to a close together with the establishment of the modern state.