Japan in the 1860s was a country watching one age die before another had fully arrived.
For more than two centuries, the Tokugawa shogunate had governed through a system of feudal loyalties.
Samurai served their domains. Domains served the shogunate.
The political order was not merely a government; it was a worldview.
Most people assumed it would last indefinitely.
Then the world arrived at Japan’s shores.
Western powers demanded access. Foreign ships appeared in Japanese waters.
Economic and political pressures mounted. The authority of the shogunate weakened.
Long-settled assumptions no longer seemed capable of explaining reality.
The question facing Japan was no longer how to preserve the existing order.
It was what kind of country should emerge after that order disappeared.
Two remarkable figures wrestled with that question.
One was Katsu Kaishū, a senior official of the Tokugawa shogunate who would later play a decisive role in preventing a devastating civil war during the Meiji Restoration.
Image in the original: Katsu Kaishū (Wikipedia)
The other was Yokoi Shōnan, a Confucian scholar and political thinker from Kumamoto whose ideas would influence many of the leading reformers of the age.
Image in the original: Yokoi Shōnan (Wikipedia)
What interests me is not simply what they thought.
It is why Katsu admired Yokoi so deeply.
A Strange Remark
Katsu later recalled that whenever Yokoi offered an opinion, he often added an unusual qualification:
“This is what I think today. Tomorrow, I may think differently.”
At first glance, the statement sounds harmless. Perhaps even sensible.
In the Japan of the 1860s, it was neither. This was an age that rewarded certainty.
Men chose sides. They pledged loyalty. They defined themselves by causes and factions. Many were willing to kill—or be killed—for their convictions.
In such a world, changing one’s mind was rarely considered a virtue.
Yet Yokoi openly acknowledged that new circumstances might require new judgments.
Most people found this unsettling. Katsu found it admirable.
He later described Yokoi as a man who never became trapped by his own opinions.
The older I get, the more profound that observation seems.
What Katsu Saw
The Japanese expression Katsu used is difficult to translate directly.
He described Yokoi as someone who never became stuck in his own thinking.
Not because he lacked convictions. Quite the opposite.
Yokoi held strong views about politics, morality, education, and the future of Japan.
What impressed Katsu was something else.
Yokoi refused to treat his own ideas as sacred.
If reality changed, he was willing to reconsider.
If new information emerged, he was willing to adapt.
He possessed conviction without rigidity. Principles without fanaticism.
In a period of upheaval, that was not weakness. It was a form of strength.
The kind that becomes visible only when old certainties begin to fail.
A Samurai Who Thought Beyond His Clan
Yokoi was born a samurai of the Kumamoto domain.
By the standards of his time, his responsibilities should have been straightforward: serve his lord, strengthen his domain, defend its interests.
Instead, he became something much harder to classify.
A Confucian scholar. A teacher. A political adviser. A reformer.
A thinker whose influence crossed the boundaries of multiple domains.
What distinguished him was not simple radicalism.
In many respects, he was deeply traditional.
He believed in moral cultivation, public duty, and the importance of learning.
Yet those very commitments pushed him beyond the limits of clan politics.
While many people focused on the fortunes of their own faction, Yokoi increasingly asked a larger question:
What kind of country would Japan need to become in order to survive the new age?
That question made him unusual. It also made him difficult to understand.
People who think beyond existing categories often appear confusing to those still operating within them.
Why Katsu Understood Him
I suspect Katsu admired Yokoi because he recognized something of himself.
Katsu was a retainer of the Tokugawa shogunate.
Yet he was never merely a servant of the shogunate.
When civil war threatened Japan, he looked beyond the interests of his own side.
His concern became the survival of the country itself.
Yokoi displayed a similar instinct.
He belonged to a clan, but was not defined by it.
He held convictions, but was not imprisoned by them.
Both men possessed loyalties larger than their immediate affiliations.
That is why Katsu could appreciate what others often misunderstood.
What looked like indecision was actually intellectual freedom.
What looked like inconsistency was the ability to respond to reality.
What looked like uncertainty was often a refusal to sacrifice truth for ideology.
Beyond the Tribe
The more history I read, the less interested I become in people who divide the world neatly into friends and enemies.
Every age produces such figures.
What fascinates me are people who remain loyal to a community without becoming imprisoned by it.
Yokoi was a samurai of Kumamoto.
Yet he thought beyond Kumamoto.
Katsu served the shogunate.
Yet he thought beyond the shogunate.
Both belonged to institutions. Neither was fully defined by them.
History offers similar figures elsewhere.
George Washington placed the future of a republic above personal power.
Abraham Lincoln struggled to preserve a union larger than any single faction.
The finest traditions of statesmanship often emerge from people who can see beyond the immediate interests of their own tribe.
Not because they lack loyalty.
But because their loyalty is directed toward something larger.
The Cost of Thinking Beyond Your Age
There is a temptation to imagine that people like Yokoi are celebrated in their own time.
History suggests otherwise.
Individuals who think beyond factions often make everyone uncomfortable.
To some, Yokoi appeared indecisive. To others, dangerous.
He supported opening Japan to the world at a time when many still feared foreign influence.
He argued that Japan needed to learn from the West rather than merely resist it.
He also displayed an unusual willingness to engage seriously with Christianity—not simply as a foreign religion, but as one of the moral foundations of Western civilization.
For many of his contemporaries, these views were deeply unsettling.
His loyalties were not easily captured by any single camp.
In 1869, only months after the Meiji Restoration, he was assassinated in Kyoto.
The precise motives behind the attack remain historically complex.
Yet one thing seems clear.
The man who spent his life thinking beyond political tribes was ultimately destroyed by the passions of his own age.
The Men Between Worlds
Perhaps the reason I keep returning to Yokoi Shōnan is that I recognize something familiar in him.
Not his achievements. Not his historical significance.
His position.
I was born in Brazil. Educated in the British tradition. I live and work in Japan.
I am a corporate employee, yet much of my intellectual life resembles that of a researcher.
Japan is where I live, but it has never felt entirely like a homeland.
Brazil is the country of my birth, yet I have spent too little of my life there to fully claim it as home.
For most of my life, I have found myself standing somewhere in between.
Between cultures. Between professions. Between belonging and freedom.
I have often longed for complete independence, yet I remain part of organizations.
I value institutions, yet instinctively resist being defined by them.
Looking back, I realize that I have spent much of my life walking along borders.
Perhaps that is why Yokoi interests me.
He too seems to have lived on a border.
A samurai, but not confined by his clan.
A Confucian, but not imprisoned by doctrine.
A man of his age, yet somehow standing slightly outside it.
Katsu Kaishū understood him because he occupied a similar position.
Neither man belonged entirely to the world that had produced him.
Both stood with one foot inside and one foot outside.
And perhaps that is where the most interesting people are often found.
Not at the center of an age.
But at its edges.
The Untranslatable Man
Every age produces passionate believers.
Periods of transition require something else.
They require people who can think beyond their tribe while still caring deeply about it.
Katsu Kaishū believed Yokoi Shōnan was such a person.
The older I get, the more I think he may have been right.
Yokoi was assassinated in Kyoto in 1869.
The old age was dying.
A new one was being born.
He helped shape that transition, but he did not live long enough to see what it would become.
People who live between worlds rarely belong completely to either one.
Yet they are often the ones who help bridge the distance between them.
Perhaps that is why Yokoi Shōnan still feels strangely modern to me.
He was a samurai.
A Confucian.
A reformer.
A patriot.
Yet none of those descriptions feels entirely sufficient.
He was a man between worlds.
In the deepest sense of the word, an untranslatable man. ■
First published on Substack on Jun 19, 2026 (JST). Archived here as part of the Fabio Caipirinha permanent archive (published on this site: Oct 15, 2026). Images from the original are omitted here pending rights clearance. Original: https://fabiocaipirinha.substack.com/p/the-samurai-who-refused-to-become
Cover image: The Kanrin Maru, the first Japanese steamship to cross the Pacific (c. 1860) (Public domain, Wikimedia Commons — source)
