Sakamoto Ryōma held public office at a time when the terms of that office were themselves being contested.
The record lists Sakamoto Ryōma as Japanese samurai and politician (1836–1867).
Sakamoto Ryōma was born at Tosa Province in 1836. His recorded nationality is Japan.
The nineteenth century produced mass politics - parties, newspapers, franchises that widened by inches - and empire on a scale never seen before.
His political affiliation is recorded as Tosa kinnō-tō.
Power is judged twice: once by contemporaries who felt it, and again by historians who did not.
That the career was made in Japan is not incidental: the institutions available, the franchise, and the constraints of the moment all shaped what could be attempted.
Sakamoto Ryōma died in 1867, aged 31. The assessment continues, as it does for anyone who held power - which is the ordinary fate of a political life.
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