Nagoya Sagenta

• Japanese: 名越 左源太 (Nagoya Sagenta)

Nagoya Sagenta was a Satsuma han official who was exiled to Amami Ôshima during the Oyura sôdô, a series of factional disputes between Shimazu Narioki and Shimazu Nariakira over domain politics, in which numerous domain retainers and others who backed one faction or the other were exiled or punished otherwise.

During his time on Amami, from roughly 1850 to 1855, he recorded numerous folk customs and other aspects of life on Amami in an illustrated volume entitled Nantô zatsuwa (lit. "Various Stories of the Southern Islands"). Sagenta's original copy is believed to no longer survive, but a number of manuscript copies were made; one such copy is today held by the University of Tokyo Historiographical Institute (Shiryôhensanjo) as part of the Shimazu-ke monjo (Shimazu Family Documents).

References

• Gallery labels, Amami Museum.
• Gallery labels, "Hokorasha Amami" ほこらしゃ奄美 special exhibition, Reimeikan Museum, Kagoshima. Nov 2021.