In the face of Perry’s demands, the shogunate conducted a national survey, calling for solutions to the foreign threat. The shogunate received hundreds of responses, the majority of which, broadly speaking, represented either of two conflicting viewpoints. On one side were those who proposed opening the country to foreigners. Their opponents advocated preserving the centuries-old policy of exclusionism. But neither side offered a constructive means for realizing their proposals. In contrast, the memorial submitted by one unknown samurai was clear, brilliant, progressive, and included concrete advice for the future of Japan. In his memorial Kaishu pointed out that Perry had been able to enter Edo Bay unimpeded only because Japan did not have a navy to defend itself. He urged the shogunate to recruit men for a navy. He dared to propose that the military government break age-old tradition and go beyond birthright to recruit men of ability, rather than the sons of the social elite — and certainly there was nobody in all of Edo more poignantly aware of this necessity than this impoverished, brilliant young man from the lower echelons of samurai society. Kaishu advised that the shogunate lift its ban on the construction of warships needed for national defense; that it manufacture Western-style cannon and rifles; that it reform the military according to modern Western standards, and establish military academies. Pointing out the great technological advances being achieved in Europe and the Untied States, Kaishu challenged the narrow-minded traditionalists who opposed the adoption of Western military technology and systems.

Within the first few years after the arrival of Perry, all of Kaishu’s proposals were adopted by the shogunate. In January 1855, Kaishu was recruited into government service. In Japanese chronology this corresponded to the second year of the Era of Stable Government, to which purpose Kaishu dedicated the remaining forty-four years of his life. In September, Kaishu sailed to Nagasaki, as one of a select group of thirty-seven Tokugawa retainers to study at the new Nagasaki Naval Academy, where he remained for two and a half years. In January 1860 Katsu Kaishu commanded the famed Kanrin Maru, a tiny triple-masted schooner, on the first authorized overseas voyage in the history of the Tokugawa Shogunate. Captain Katsu and Company were bound for San Francisco. They preceded the Japanese delegation dispatched to Washington aboard the U.S. steam frigate Powhattan to ratify Japan’s first commercial treaty. After the arrival of the Powhattan, they would return to Japan to report the safe arrival of the delegation. But more significantly for Captain Katsu and Company was the opportunity to demonstrate the maritime skills they had acquired under their Dutch instructors at Nagasaki, “for,” as Kaishu emphasized, “the glory of the Japanese Navy.”

Kaishu remained in San Francisco for nearly two months, observing American society, culture and technology. He contrasted American society to that of feudal Japan, where a person was born into one of four castes — warrior, peasant, artisan, merchant — and, for the most part, remained in that caste for life. Of particular interest to Kaishu, who was determined to modernize and indeed democratize his own nation, were certain aspects of American democracy. “There is no distinction between soldier, peasant, artisan or merchant. Any man can be engaged in commerce,” he observed. “Even a high-ranking officer is free to set up business once he resigns or retires.”

Generally, the samurai, who received a stipend from their feudal lord, looked down upon the men of the merchant class, and considered business for monetary profit a base occupation. “Usually people walking through town do not wear swords, regardless of whether they are soldiers, merchants or government officials,” while in Japan it was a samurai’s strict obligation to be armed at all times. Kaishu also observed the peculiar relationship between men and women in American society. “A man accompanied by his wife will always hold her hand as he walks.” The immense cultural and social gaps notwithstanding, Kaishu, the outsider among his countrymen, was pleased with the Americans. “I had not expected the Americans to express such delight at our arrival to San Francisco, nor for all the people of the city, from the government officials on down, to make such great efforts to treat us so well.”

In 1862, Kaishu was appointed vice-commissioner of the Tokugawa Navy. He established his naval academy in Kobe in 1863, with the help of his right-hand man, Sakamoto Ryoma. The following year Kaishu was promoted to the post of navy commissioner, and received the honorary title Awa-no-Kami, Protector of the Province of Awa. In October 1864, Kaishu, who had thus far enjoyed the ear of the shogun, was recalled to Edo, dismissed from his post and placed under house arrest for harboring known enemies of the Tokugawa. His naval academy was closed down, and his generous stipend reduced to a bare minimum.

In 1866 the shogun’s forces suffered a series of humiliating defeats at the hands of the revolutionary Choshu Army. Kaishu was subsequently reinstated to his former post by Tokugawa Yoshinobu, Head of the House of Tokugawa, who in the following December would become the fifteenth and last Tokugawa Shogun. Lord Yoshinobu did not like Kaishu, just as Kaishu did not like Lord Yoshinobu. Kaishu was a maverick within the government, who had broken age-old tradition and even law by imparting his expertise to enemies of the shogunate; who openly criticized his less talented colleagues at Edo for their inability, if not blind refusal, to realize that the years, and perhaps even days, of Tokugawa rule were numbered; who in the Grand Hall at Edo Castle had braved punishment and even death by advising then-Shogun Tokugawa Iemochi to abdicate; and who was now recalled to service because Yoshinobu and his aides knew that Kaishu was the only man in all of Edo who wielded both the respect and trust of the revolutionaries.

In August 1866, Navy Commissioner Katsu Kaishu was dispatched to Miyajima — Island of the Shrine — in the domain of Hiroshima to meet representatives of Choshu. Before departing he told Lord Yoshinobu, “I’ll have things settled with the Choshu men within one month. If I’m not back by then, you can assume that they’ve cut off my head.” Kaishu was aware of the grave danger to his life as an emissary of the Tokugawa, but nevertheless traveled alone, without a single bodyguard. Shortly after successfully negotiating a peace with Choshu, the outsider resigned his post, due to irreconcilable differences with the powers that were, and returned to his home in Edo.

In October 1867, Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu announced his abdication and the restoration of power to the emperor. But diehard oppositionists within the Tokugawa camp were determined to fight the forces of the new imperial government. The leaders of the new imperial government were equally determined to annihilate the remnants of the Tokugawa, to ensure that it would never rise again. Civil war broke out near Kyoto in January 1868. Although the imperial forces, led by Saigo Kichinosuke of Satsuma, were greatly outnumbered, they routed the army of the former shogun in just three days. The new government’s leaders now demanded that Yoshinobu commit ritual suicide, and set March 15 as the date fifty thousand imperial troops would lay siege to Edo Castle, and, in so doing, subject the entire city to the flames of war.

The services of Katsu Kaishu were once again indispensable to the Tokugawa. Kaishu desperately wanted to avoid a civil war, which he feared would incite foreign agression. But he was nevertheless bound by his duty as a direct retainer of the Tokugawa to serve in the best interest of his liege lord, Tokugawa Yoshinobu. In March 1868, with a formidable fleet of twelve warships at his disposal, this son of a petty samurai was the most powerful man in Edo. And as head of the Tokugawa army, he was determined to burn Edo Castle rather than relinquish it in battle, and to wage a bloody civil war against Saigo’s forces. When Kaishu was informed of the imperial government’s plans for imminent attack, he immediately sent a letter to Saigo. In this letter Kaishu wrote that the retainers of the Tokugawa were an inseparable part of the new Japanese nation. Instead of fighting with one another, those of the new government and the old must cooperate in order to deal with the very real threat of the foreign powers, whose legations in Japan anxiously watched the great revolution which had consumed the Japanese nation for these past fifteen years.

Saigo replied with a set of conditions, including the peaceful surrender of Edo Castle, which must be met if the House of Tokugawa was to be allowed to survive, Yoshinobu’s life spared, and war avoided. At an historic meeting with Saigo on March 14, one day before the planned attack, Kaishu accepted Saigo’s conditions, and went down in history as the man who not only saved the lives and property of Edo’s one million inhabitants, but also the entire Japanese nation.