Matsuo Taseko

Matsuo Taseko was born in 1811 under Takemura Tsuminetsu and Sachiko. She　generally liked reading books and she often kept indoors of a library all day long. In her 19th, she got married to Matsuo Sajiemon and bore three boys and four girls. Sajiemon was told rather as in a poor health so that Taseko was mostly in charge of managing the family, while studying classical Japanese poem. Through her study, she gradually got interested in Japan Studies filled with the idea of Sonno-Joi, and when she was 52, she decided to visit Kyoto with the permission of her husband. 

In Kyoto, she encountered to a lot of samurais from Tosa domain (today Kochi Prefecture) and Choshu, and even served as an advisor for these samurais. She also visited Iwakura Tomomi, a court noble progressing Sonno-Joi. She then successfully reveals Iwakura’s innocence since he was once suspected as the supporter of Edo Bakufu. During the age, a woman like Taseko was very rare in terms of Support Sonno-Joi by interacting with Samurais (JA Minami Shinshu, 2017). Sonō-joi was the movement during Bakumatsu period, which is to worship Japanese loyal family, especially an emperor, and to exclude foreign forces of the great powers. According to Nagaoka Yuta, there were two types of Sonō-jōi. The first type is called small-scale jōi, which was often referred to the direct movement of forceful removal against foreign people. It was rather a violent practice and was caused by the motivation of people of fear against foreign people. On the other hand, the other type, a large-scale jōi aimed at strengthening the power of the country as a whole, rather than showing a hostility towards foreign people, the large-scale jōi focused on the protection and competition against the great power by the cultivation of its own country. Matsuo Taseko seemed to have supported then jōi activist such as Iwakura Tomomi and Kusaka Gensui, and she herself devoted to be an actitivist of sonō-jōi.