Yokoi Shonan was born on September 22, 1809 and died on February 15, 1869. Shonan was both a scholar and an activist for political reformation during both the Bakumatsu and early Meiji periods. Yokoi’s real name was Yokoi Tokiari. He was born in Kumamoto and had two children with his wife, Yajima Tsuseko. In his earlier years, Yokoi was involved in advocating for political reform in the Kumamoto region. He founded a group that promoted the reform of the Kumamoto administration in a more Neo-Confucianism light. In his opinion, one of Japan’s major weaknesses, in comparison with the Western civilizations, was the fact that Japan did not have a unifying, national religion; it was split between Buddhism, Shinto, and Confucianism. In terms of his thoughts on the Western way of life, many historians refer to Yokoi Shonan as a “pro-Western,” relative to other Japanese during that time period. However, Shonan was critical of the Western religious faith in Christianity.
Yokoi also supported Japan opening up to trade with other nations, economic reform, and military expansion. In 1858, Matsudaira Shungaku chose Yokoi Shonan to be his personal political advisor, as he was serving as the lord of the Fukui Clan. In 1862, a major reform that he pushed forward was kobu gattai undo, the movement to unite the Imperial Court and Shogunate, which eventually failed. At the time, these liberal ideas were considered radical by many Japanese, and his adversaries stripped him of his samurai status. A band of conservatives, who did not agree with Yokoi’s stance on Western influence, arrested Yokoi and later assassinated him in 1869, after suspecting that he had converted to Christianity.
Yokoi Shonan was also the uncle of Yokoi Daihei and Yokoi Saheida. With the help of Guido Verbeck, their English teacher from Nagasaki, Yokoi Shonan sent his two nephews to the United States in 1866, breaking the temporary isolation policy. Both Yokoi Daihei and Yokoi Saheida settled into a home in New Brunswick, New Jersey, after meeting up with John M. Ferris of the Dutch Reformed Church. They attended the Rutgers Grammar School, but did not have the English skills necessary to enroll in Rutgers University. The Yokoi brothers were the first Japanese international students to attend Rutgers, and they paved the way for many more to arrive in the coming years. If it were not for the endorsement of Yokoi Shonan to violate the foreign travel policies of Japan at the time and send his nephews to the United States to study, the history of Rutgers and international students from both Japan and around the world would not be the same today.
Sources:
Heinlein, David A., The Journal of the Rutgers University Libraries – The New Brunswick-Japan Connection: A History, Vol. LII, 1990, pg. 1-20.
Welden, Frederick, Hashimoto Sanai: A Japanese Martyr, pg. 15-21.
“Yokoi, Shonan.” Yokoi, Shonan | Portraits of Modern Japanese Historical Figures, www.ndl.go.jp/portrait/e/datas/345.html.