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Description
A participant in the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate, after the Meiji Restoration Etō Shinpei was appointed to a number of government posts, including Minister of Justice where he played a part in overhauling Japan's penal code. He resigned from the government in 1873 in protest over the government's refusal to attack Korea. One of the problems facing the Meiji government was to create a modern army alongside the samurai class. A peacetime army could not absorb all the samurai into its officer corps, but a large wartime army could. The real issue, hence, was how to maintain the position of the samurai class. The following year he retired to Saga, where he led a party of disgruntled samurai in rebellion. Quickly defeated, Eto was captured, tried, and executed. He is pictured in a peaceful moment here, examining a lily in his garden and holding a fan in his left hand. He is casually dressed in a kimono and wears thick-soled sandals for outdoors. To his left, a lantern is hung in a cut-out section of a tree trunk.
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