勅使を奉じて江戸へ赴き、幕政改革を行わせる。しかし、その帰りに藩士がイギリス人を殺傷（生麦事件）、翌年に鹿児島湾に来航したイギリス艦隊と激しい砲撃戦を交えた。その和平交渉でイギリスと親密となり、留学生派遣や紡績機械等の輸入、技師招聘を行った。また、斉彬の遺志を継ぎ集成館事業を復活させる。元治元(1864)年の参与会議で徳川慶喜の意見が対立、この頃から幕府と距離を置くようになる。雄藩連合による政権樹立を試みるが、天皇を中核とした新政権樹立に方針を変更した。 明治2(1869)年参議に任じられるも、予想を上回る改革と欧化政策に反発、鹿児島に留まった。明治6(1873)年に政府の働きかけで上京、内閣顧問や左大臣を務める。しかし欧化政策に反対し再び鹿児島へと戻る。鹿児島の玉里に隠遁、文書の収集・編纂に従事するようになる。西南戦争では桜島にて中立を保つ。明治17(1884)年に公爵を授かり、明治20(1887)年、玉里邸（現、鹿児島市玉里町、鹿児島女子高校）にて71歳で逝去。
Shimazu Hisamitsu was the father of the last daimyo of Satsuma han, the young Shimazu Tadayoshi, who ruled the domain from 1858 until 1871. Despite not being the domain's lord himself, as regent for his son, Hisamitsu governed the domain, and acted prominently on the national level, as if he were.
Hisamitsu was the son of Shimazu Narioki and Oyura no kata, and was thus a half-brother to Shimazu Nariakira. He was considered the head of the Echizen (Shigetomi) branch of the Shimazu, and the founder or ancestor of the Tamazato branch. Though supported by his mother, Hisamitsu lost to Nariakira in a succession dispute in 1851, and was passed over as lord of the domain. However, when Nariakira died suddenly in 1858, he was succeeded by Hisamitsu's teenage son, Tadayoshi. Hisamitsu then served as regent for a time, and exercised considerable influence over domain policy.
In regards to the Ryûkyû Kingdom, which was something of a vassal state under Satsuma's suzerainty, Hisamitsu reversed many of the policies of the previous daimyô, his brother, Shimazu Nariakira. Among his first actions as regent were to reverse Nariakira's policies aiming to expand trade with Westerners in Ryûkyû. For the next several years, the domain avoided seeking out any new or additional involvements with Westerners, but continued to support Ryûkyû's tribute trade with China, and worked to expand connections between Satsuma and Chôshû, a domain in Western Honshû with whom Satsuma had no particular history of close relationship. Hisamitsu pursued this aggressively, establishing a trading office in Shimonoseki and sending two merchant ships laden with Satsuma goods in 1859; the following year, Chôshû sent representatives to Satsuma to negotiate a trade relationship. A lively trade in Satsuma sugar for Chôshû salt and whalebones, among other goods on both sides, quickly developed. Later that same year (1860), with the aid of the Nagasaki bugyô, Hisamitsu managed to purchase a steamship, the England.[1].
Prior to the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate, Hisamitsu vacillated between supporting and opposing the shogunate, while certain of his prominent retainers, Saigô Takamori chief among them, were staunch in their opposition to the shogunate. Still, Hisamitsu took steps to encourage an alliance between the shogunate and the Imperial Court, uniting the two in order to restore order; to those same ends, he also pressured Shogun Tokugawa Iemochi to travel to Kyoto.[2] Doing so in 1863, he became the first shogun since Tokugawa Iemitsu in 1634 to enter the Imperial city.
Meanwhile, the previous year (1862), in accordance with orders from Emperor Kômei that he aid in eliminating the problem of anti-shogunate rebels meeting and plotting in Kyoto, Hisamitsu dispatched a team of samurai from Satsuma to retrieve rebels originating from Satsuma and to bring them back to the domain, resulting in the famous Teradaya Incident. A fight broke out at an inn in Fushimi between rebels who had met there to plot against the shogunate, and these samurai dispatched by Hisamitsu to suppress their activities; several were killed before the remaining rebels surrendered.
Hisamitsu was also involved in the famous Namamugi Incident that same year, when a British merchant, Charles Richardson, either refused or was unable to properly make way for Hisamitsu's entourage as it traveled down the road; Richardson was killed, and in response the British Royal Navy bombarded Kagoshima, the chief Satsuma castle town.
In the early Meiji period, he remained a staunch pro-samurai conservative, leaving Tokyo and returning to Kagoshima in anger and frustration in the early or mid-1870s, after submitting memorials to the Emperor expressing his distaste for reforms and innovations that had been undertaken which undermined the samurai as a privileged class of warriors, as well as reforms to the calendar, the wearing of Western dress at formal state occasions, the employment of foreigners as special advisors to the government, the adoption of foreign modes of military training, the adoption of commoner/citizen military conscription, and the like.
References
- Kerr, George. Okinawa: The History of an Island People. Revised Edition. Tuttle Publishing, 2000.
- Norman, E.H. Soldier and Peasant in Japan: The Origins of Conscription. New York: Institute for Pacific Relations, 1945. pp43-44.