8 - Imai Nobuo

Summary

This chapter examines the life of Imai Nobuo, a Tokugawa retainer, to highlight first the level of violence that marked the years leading up to the Meiji Restoration, and second, the motivations and experiences of armed groups, such as one led by Imai, that fought against the Chōshū-Satsuma alliance throughout the Boshin War. The chapter also reveals how following the war’s end, financial support from local and regional entities helped Imai and other Tokugawa “losers” start new lives in Shizuoka prefecture, in Imai’s case initially as a prefectural bureaucrat and later as a tea farmer. Imai’s life thus underscores how personal reinvention in Meiji Japan was made possible by the forgiving stance of regional and central government leaders. Exemplifying the global connections at the heart of this volume, the chapter additionally charts the ways in which US demand for green tea, which expanded in the 1870s, helped to make tea farming a viable profession for Imai and other ex-Tokugawa stalwarts. Overall through the life of Imai, it pinpoints some of the internal and global factors that helped facilitate reconciliation and by implication, nation-state formation in the early Meiji Japan.