Meiji Restoration Museum

About

In Kajiya-cho, Kagoshima City, this museum opened on April 28, 1994, standing in the very neighborhood where Saigō Takamori, Ōkubo Toshimichi, Tōgō Heihachirō, and Ōyama Iwao were born. Novelist Shiba Ryōtarō once observed that this small town 'accomplished in one town what was normally done across the entire nation from the Meiji Restoration through the Russo-Japanese War.' On the first floor, 'Heroes' Path' displays material on Atsuhime (Tenshōin), local education, and Satsuma's overseas ties, while the basement's 'Path of Restoration' greets visitors with life-sized robots and a diorama of old Kajiya-cho. Two dramatic presentations are staged here: 'The Road to Restoration,' and 'Satsuma Students, Heading West,' which tells of the young men the domain sent to Britain in defiance of the national ban after the Anglo-Satsuma War.