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西郷隆盛（さいごう たかもり、1828-1877）は、明治維新を主導した薩摩藩出身の政治家・軍人。江戸城無血開城や廃藩置県に貢献したが、1877年の西南戦争で自刃した。「敬天愛人」の思想と『南洲翁遺訓』で知られる。
Saigo Takamori was born on January 23, 1828 (the 7th day of the 12th month of Bunsei 10 by the lunar calendar), into a low-ranking samurai family in the Satsuma domain, present-day Kagoshima. While still young he was noticed by the domain’s lord, Shimazu Nariakira, and accompanied him to Edo, becoming Nariakira’s trusted confidant and throwing himself into the political turmoil of the late Tokugawa era. But when Nariakira died suddenly in 1858 and the shogunate’s Ansei Purge turned on Saigo, he attempted suicide by drowning in Kinko Bay together with his ally, the monk Gessho — only Saigo survived. Branded a criminal, he was twice exiled to remote islands, first Amami-Oshima and then Okinoerabu-jima, spending nearly five years there in total.
After his pardon, Saigo became the central military leader of the movement to overthrow the shogunate, driving the key turning points of the Meiji Restoration: the Satsuma-Choshu Alliance brokered through Sakamoto Ryoma’s mediation, his command of the new imperial army during the Boshin War, and the bloodless surrender of Edo Castle he negotiated with the shogunate’s Katsu Kaishu. After the Restoration he served the new government as a state councilor (sangi) and army general, leading reforms such as the abolition of the domains (haihan-chiken). In 1873, however, he lost the political struggle over sending him as an envoy to Korea (the “Seikanron” debate, or Meiji 6 Political Crisis), resigned his post, and returned to Kagoshima.
Back home, he founded a private academy to educate the region’s young men, but in 1877 he was reluctantly carried forward as the figurehead of former samurai whose discontent with the government had reached a breaking point, and the Satsuma Rebellion broke out. Defeated in battle after battle, he retreated to Kagoshima, and on September 24 of that year took his own life at Shiroyama, ending his life at age 49 (traditionally recorded as 51 by the old Japanese age-counting method). Briefly stripped of honor as a rebel, he was rehabilitated in 1889 with the promulgation of the Meiji Constitution. The teachings his students compiled as the Nanshu-o Ikun, and the phrase “Revere Heaven, Love People” that he loved to write in his own calligraphy, are still widely read today, and he remains admired across generations as a man who set aside self-interest to live for the public good.