Sakamoto Ryoma’s Stylized Signature on Display for First Time

September 24, 2018

Fukui- A letter with a "kao" stylized signature of Sakamoto Ryoma, a hero in the closing days of the Edo period in Japan, is on display for the first time, at a special exhibition that started on Saturday at a museum in the central Japan prefecture of Fukui.

According to the Fukui Prefectural Museum of Cultural History, where the event is held, the letter is the only confirmed item having an original kao written by Ryoma himself.

The letter, dated Oct. 6, 1864, was addressed to Murata Ujihisa, a samurai from the feudal domain of Fukui.

In the letter, Ryoma, who was from the domain of Tosa, which is today's Kochi Prefecture, western Japan, said that he would travel to the Kanto eastern region shortly accompanying Iwashita Michihira, a samurai from the Satsuma domain, which included what is now the southwestern prefecture of Kagoshima.

The letter, now owned by a person living outside of Fukui, is one of the only two letters confirmed to have been written by Ryoma in 1864.

Historical novelist Sakujin Kirino, 64, who wrote about the kao in question in a magazine in 2010, said the letter is meaningful because it gives a clue to Ryoma's moves at the time. Jiji Press