More than half a century ago I had dinner in Paris with Arimasa Mori, the grandson of the Meiji Era education minister Arinori Mori, who had set the prewar pattern for a Westernized but intensely patriotic education. The Mori family hailed from Kagoshima, and the part that Arinori had played in the Meiji Restoration, as a 20-year-old, was not insignificant.
Grandson Arimasa had, by the time I met him, given up his job at the University of Tokyo and settled in Paris for the life of an émigré philosopher, a noted expert on Descartes and Pascal. I was staying in a scruffy hotel, the top floor of which was his Bohemian garret.
One thing I remember clearly from that fascinating conversation was his remark about the centuries-old enmity between Satsuma and Choshu. They had cooperated to bring about the Meiji Restoration.