BEHOLD, IT IS THAT TIME ONCE MORE! #FridayNightHistory and time to gather round and talk about Hiroshima, Fax Machines, and how The Old (Samurai) Days Were Really Not That Long Ago At all!

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So a bunch of you tagged me in that viral tweet the other day about "samurai could've used fax machines," and folks by and large seemed surprised that samurai weren't all that ancient. And they really weren't!

When I was an undergraduate in the early 2000s, I corresponded with an elderly gentleman whose kendo teacher in the late 1940s (as I recall) was a Boshin War veteran. It really was *not* all that long ago that that era existed.

Samurai status was, for all intents and purposes, abolished (or converted to the new peerage system) by the 1870s. So the last war that samurai would have fought in *as* samurai was the Boshin War of 1868-1869.

Consider also, kids as young as 9 or 10 fought in the Boshin War. I've seen casualty rosters from Aizu domain during its defense in the autumn of 1868, that are soul-crushing in terms of both ends of the age spectrum. The youngest killed was under 10, and the eldest nearly 100.

Shinsengumi, famous for its combat across the 1860s, had a few troopers in 1868 who were as young as 12 by western reckoning. So, 1868-12=birth year of 1856. If someone fought in the Boshin War at age 12, they'd've been 89 in 1945.

Even if our hypothetical Boshin War vet was 20, that means they'd've been 97, in 1945. Still plenty of them around, then. There are still a fair number of people alive *today* who would remember those days, and having met men of that era.

So that brings me to Asano Nagakoto (pictured). The Asano family that appeared in the 47 Ronin episode of @lions_by was a branch of Nagakoto's. This was the house of Asano who were lords of Hiroshima, a major domain,in western Japan. Yes, *that* Hiroshima was their castle town.

Nagakoto was born in 1842, which means he'd have been 26 in 1868. He spent much of the 1860s as the public face and voice of his clan, on behalf of his adoptive father Nagamichi.

Hiroshima domain was on the front lines of the war between the Shogunate and the Choshu domain, the clan in westernmost Honshu that went on to spearhead the cabal that orchestrated the coup d'etat we call a Restoration.

But as the political tides shifted, the house of Asano built its own ties with the Choshu and Satsuma clans, and was on their side as the Boshin War began, though it was opposed to military action at the outset.

Nagakoto succeeded to lordship of Hiroshima at the *end* of the war, in 1869, and ruled until the abolition of the domain system in 1871. He was ennobled as a Marquis, and went on to even become ambassador to Italy.

Although he lived in Tokyo after 1871, he devoted the balance of his life to supporting the development of the ex-Hiroshima domain, now Hiroshima Prefecture.

And he died in *1937.*

Think about that. The last daimyo of Hiroshima lived until 1937; *eight years* before Enola Gay dropped the A-bomb.

There was only *one* other daimyo who lived longer than him (Hayashi Tadataka, who died in 1941, and on whom I've done another #FridayNightHistory thread).

but there were other, younger people who weren't daimyo who survived the Boshin War and who lived into the late 40s and a few into the early 1950s. Not strange at all when you think of the American Civil War as an equivalent yardstick.

Consider that Albert Woolson, the last known surviving Union Army soldier, who came from roughly the same era, died in 1956. The last Union combat veteran, James Hard, was one year older than Nagakoto, and died in 1953.

The last person to receive a pension from the Civil War, Irene Triplett, died **this year**-- her father fought in a Tennessee Union regiment.

So, no. Not that long ago at all.

Now if I can only figure out if any samurai used that early fax machine from the viral tweet...

I'm Nyri and this has been another #FridayNightHistory -- thank you, Twitter! Good night!

Now, questions?

/thread

SOURCES:
https://kotobank.jp/word/%E6%B5%85%E9%87%8E%E9%95%B7%E5%8B%B2-14528
https://www.wsj.com/articles/last-person-to-receive-a-civil-war-era-pension-dies-11591141193
Yamakawa Kenjiro & Munekawa Toraji. Hoshu Aizu Byakkotai Jukyushiden. Wakamatsu: Aizu Chorei Gikai, 1926.