Sanjo Sanetomi
Sanjô Sanetomi was a top-ranking official in both the Bakumatsu era Tokugawa shogunate and in the Meiji government, who played a prominent role in connections with Chôshû han and the toppling of the shogunate. In the Meiji period, he served as Dajô daijin and as Naidaijin.
In 1863, Sanetomi was one of seven court nobles expelled from Kyoto, in an event known as the Fall of Seven Nobles Incident, after being discovered plotting against the shogunate's efforts to unite the shogunate with the Imperial family & Court. The seven made their way at that time to Chôshû, where they met up with fellow anti-shogunate rebels.
Sanetomi is buried at Gokoku-ji. The Imperial Court commissioned Tanaka Yûbi to paint a series of scroll paintings in 1900 depicting the great events of the life of Sanetomi; Yûbi produced similar scroll sets for the lives of Sanetomi's father Sanjô Sanetsumu, and Iwakura Tomomi. These beautiful scrolls remain today in the Imperial collections, and serve as a lionization of these figures as heroes of the Meiji nation.[1] Similarly, Nashinoki Shrine, located on the former grounds of the Sanjô family mansion just outside the Kyoto Imperial Palace, was re-dedicated in 1915 to the spirits of Sanetomi and his father.[2]
References
- Gallery label, "Chinese-style Quatrain in Seven-character Phrases," Tokyo National Museum.[1]
- ↑ Gallery labels, "The two people who supported Emperor Meiji - Sanjo Sanetomi and Iwakura Tomomi - an account of the late Edo period to the Meiji Restoration in biographical picture scrolls," The Museum of the Imperial Collections, Sannomaru Shôzôkan, September 2014.
- ↑ Plaques on-site at Nashinoki Shrine.
