Shinsengumi:
The Shogun's Last and
Most Dreaded Samurai Corps
by Romulus Hillsborough
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In briefly discussing the Shinsengumi, I will focus on the corps' two leaders, Kondo Isami and Hijikata Toshizo. But first some historical background. In June 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry of the US Navy led a squadron of four heavily armed warships two steam frigates and two sloops-of-war into the bay just south of the shogun's capital at Edo, modern-day Tokyo. The Japanese were intimidated and quite overwhelmed by Perry's Black Ships, as demonstrated in a letter to Edo from the official in charge of monitoring all Edo-bound vessels as they entered the bay. "Two of the American warships are iron-plated steamers; one is mounted with thirty or forty cannon, one with twelve. The other two ships are mounted with more than twenty cannon each. They can move about freely without the use of scull or oar, and can come and go with great speed. They are just like floating castles which can move as they will." The Americans' ensuing gunboat diplomacy, which ended two centuries of Japanese isolation, set into motion a process which in fifteen years would transform some 260 feudal domains into a single, unified nation. But first Japan would endure the most tumultuous period in its history. During the decade after Perry's arrival, hordes of renegade samurai, known as ronin, abandoned their feudal clans to fight for the cause of Imperial Loyalism under the slogan Sonno-Joi (Revere the Emperor and Expel the Barbarians). Many of these Imperial Loyalists gathered in Kyoto the ancient Imperial Capital to rally around the xenophobic emperor and express their discontent to the Tokugawa Bakufu for yielding to foreign demands to open Japan. The Bakufu shogunate in English was the military regime which dominated Japan for two and a half centuries. The ronin bitterly opposed the Bakufu's official policy of Opening the Country. They eventually replaced their Sonno-Joi slogan with the more radical Kinno-Tobaku (Revere the Emperor and Down with the Bakufu). Screaming "Tenchu" (Heaven's Revenge), the ronin wielded their swords with a vengeance upon their enemies namely sympathizers, allies and representatives of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The formerly peaceful streets of the Imperial Capital became scenes of unprecedented carnage. In the spring of 1863, the fourteenth shogun, Tokugawa Iemochi, was compelled to visit Kyoto to promise the emperor that he would expel the foreigners from Japan. Around this time the Bakufu instituted a new post the protector of Kyoto. It was the official function of the protector of Kyoto to safeguard the Imperial Capital in preparation for the shogun's visit. But his true purpose was to destroy enemies of the Tokugawa regime. The Bakufu recruited ronin to aid the protector of Kyoto. To this end, it proclaimed a general amnesty, freeing incarcerated criminals whom it deemed worthy to enlist in the Ronin Corps. Soon hundreds of two-sworded men of eastern Japan, all of whom despised the shogunate's policy of opening the country to foreigners, were recruited into the Ronin Corps to subdue like-minded men in western Japan. Under the slogan "loyalty and patriotism," the Ronin Corps marched three hundred miles to Kyoto. But soon after the corps arrived, the authorities discovered that most of those ronin were just as dangerous to the government as the men they had been commissioned to subdue. With the exception of a select few, the Ronin Corps were returned to Edo where they could do little harm. Among the select few who remained in Kyoto were two exceptional men, adamantly loyal to the Tokugawa Shogun. Their names were Kondo Isami and Serizawa Kamo. Kondo was born the son of a peasant in the Tama region near Edo. Serizawa was born into the samurai class of the Mito domain. Both were expert swordsmen who had been chief instructors of fencing schools in Edo. They had enlisted in the Ronin Corps, with several of their top swordsmen in tow, for the dual purpose of protecting the shogun and expelling the foreigners. Kondo, Serizawa and their respective followers, thirteen men in all, comprised the original membership of the Shinsengumi. The Shinsengumi literally, Newly Selected Corps were commissioned to restore law and order in Kyoto. They were as reviled as they were revered, and known vicariously as ronin hunters, wolves, murderers, thugs, band of assassins, and eventually the most dreaded security force in Japanese history. Their self-assigned and official mission was to protect the shogun. Their true purpose, however, was single and clear to kill the ronin who would overthrow the shogun's government. Kondo and Serizawa served as co-commanders of the Shinsengumi, under Matsudaira Katamori, protector of Kyoto and Lord of Aizu. The daimyo, or feudal lord, of the powerful Aizu clan was a close relative of the shogun, and one of his staunchest allies. Kondo Isami became co-commander of the Shinsengumi at age twenty-nine. He would serve both the Lord of Aizu and the Tokugawa Shogun faithfully for the remaining five years of his life. He had been adopted by his fencing instructor, Kondo Shusuke, master of the Shieikan, a minor fencing school in Edo. Master Kondo Shusuke and his successor, Kondo Isami, taught the Tennen Rishin style of fencing at the Shieikan and the outlying countryside. Kondo Isami was a peasant by birth, a warrior by nature. He was a man of traditional values and a martial mindset. On the back of his black training robe was embroidered in white the image of a human skull a symbol of his resolve to die each time he entered the training hall. When Kondo Isami enlisted in the Ronin Corps he had hopes of becoming a samurai in the service of the shogun. His hopes were realized probably beyond his wildest expectations about six months later, when he became the sole commander of the shogun's most dreaded samurai corps. Kondo's closest friend was Hijikata Toshizo, vice commander of the Shinsengumi. Also known as the "Demon Commander," Hijikata was one year younger than Kondo. Like Kondo, he hailed from a peasant household in the Tama region near Edo. To support himself while practicing fencing, Hijikata traveled through the local countryside peddling a special herbal medicine produced by his family. So great was his passion for fencing that on his travels he always carried his training equipment, stopping to practice at fencing schools along the way. He was a good-looking man, with somewhat feminine features. It is said that at Kondo's dojo, Hijikata wore his faceguard tied with a pretty red chord, earning the quiet ridicule of certain of his fellow swordsmen. But he was also one of the most skilled swordsmen at the Shieikan, where he held a license to teach. In the future, people in Hijikata's native village were astounded by reports of the bloodletting in Kyoto at the hands of the vice commander of the Shinsengumi. Hijikata further astounded his native villagers when he returned home on a brief interlude from his duties in Kyoto, and reportedly told a gathering there that the steel blade of one of his swords had rotted from overexposure to human blood. Faction Split Soon after the formation of the Shinsengumi, the original members split into two factions. Serizawa's fencing students naturally followed their instructor, just as Kondo's students followed theirs. More corpsmen were recruited, and soon the membership exceeded one hundred. The Shinsengumi occupied numerous buildings, including private homes and Buddhist temples, at Mibu Village on the western extremity of Kyoto. Most of the officers, including Kondo, Hijikata and Serizawa, lived at the home of a low-ranking samurai in Mibu. The samurai's family name was Yagi, and his house was known as the Yagi Residence. Across the narrow street was the home of the Maekawa family, where the corps set up official headquarters. Both houses, renowned for the bloody legacy of their notorious tenants, are still intact. The Shinsengumi adopted a uniform a flashy light blue linen jacket with broad white stripes on the bottoms of the sleeves. They took as their symbol the Chinese character for "sincerity" to indicate their loyalty to the Tokugawa. Their symbol, pronounced "makoto," was emblazoned on their red and white banner. (Click the following link to view the banner and a photo of Kondo Isami: http://www.ridgebackpress.com/heroes/shinsegumi.htm) They conducted daily patrols dressed in their uniform and carrying their banner. They questioned or arrested ronin in and around the Imperial Capital. Their fearsome spectacle on the city streets became an everyday phenomenon. The Shinsengumi did their job well. Soon a semblance of order was restored to the city. The corps' unprecedented strength was bolstered by their severe code, devised by Kondo and Hijikata. That both men had been born into peasant households certainly steeled their resolve to conduct themselves and their corps according to the most stoic traditions of the warrior class. Strictly prohibited were "violating the Code of the Samurai," "quitting the corps," "raising money for selfish purposes," "taking it upon oneself to make accusations," and "fighting for personal reasons." Violation of any of these prohibitions was punishable by seppuku literally, "cutting the belly." Attached to the prohibitions was a particularly severe regulation which perhaps more than anything else accounted for the fearsome reputation of the Shinsengumi: "In case of a fight, if you do not kill your opponent you will be ordered to commit seppuku, just as if you had been wounded from behind." Daily Occupation: Killing Killing became a daily occupation for the Shinsengumi. Their very livelihood depended on terror and bloodshed. Perhaps the most brutal killer in the corps was the commander himself. "He was fearsome even when drinking," Kondo Isami's former mistress, Miyuki, who had been employed as a courtesan in Kyoto, reminisced nearly a half century later. "People would talk about whom they had killed today, and whom they were going to kill tomorrow. It was all so frightful. According to what I had heard, by that time Kondo had killed fifty or sixty men." But it wasn't until the summer of 1864, the year after the corps had been established, that they cut their way into the psyche of the bloodiest of times at an inn in Kyoto called the Ikedaya securing their place as the most feared police force in Japanese history. During that summer radical Loyalists in Kyoto, led by the revolutionary Choshu clan, plotted to kidnap the emperor, burn the Imperial Palace and assassinate the protector of Kyoto. Their plan was in an ill-fated attempt to regain control over the Imperial Court and topple the Tokugawa Bakufu. Shinsengumi spies caught word of the plan and captured one of the ringleaders, Furudaka Shuntaro, a ronin from the nearby province of Omi. Under pain of torture, Furudaka confirmed the veracity of the plan. When the rebels learned that their man had been captured by the Shinsengumi, they called a meeting among themselves at the Ikedaya Inn near Sanjo Ohashi (Sanjo Small Bridge) in the Kawaramachi district of Kyoto to formulate a counterplan. The meeting took place on the night of June 5. Present were about twenty rebels, mostly from the Choshu, Kumamoto and Tosa clans. As the rebels were talking and drinking in a room on the second floor of the Ikedaya, ten men of the Shinsengumi barged in on their meeting. A furious and bloody battle ensued. When the fighting ended about two hours later, seven rebels had been killed and numerous others were captured. (Four more rebels died from their wounds.) Only one of the Shinsengumi was killed during the fighting. Four were wounded, two fatally. The casualties suffered by the Loyalists at the Ikedaya were devastating. Some of their best men perished. Certain historians say that by raiding the Ikedaya the Shinsengumi delayed the fall of the Bakufu by a full year. Others argue that the incident only hastened the Meiji Restoration by inflaming outrage among Loyalists throughout Japan, particularly those of Choshu. After the Ikedaya Incident there was not a soul in Kyoto who did not recognize the name Shinsengumi. Their mere mention evoked hatred among the enemies of the Tokugawa Shogunate, whose comrades they had slaughtered. But this hatred was no less intense than the fear they aroused among the renegades whom they continued to hunt on the dangerous streets of Kyoto. Most of those renegades looked to the Choshu clan as their leader in the revolution. Choshu, in fact, had suffered the greatest human loss at the Ikedaya. A month after the Ikedaya Incident, rebel forces led by Choshu retaliated by attacking pro-Tokugawa troops, including those of Aizu and Satsuma, at the gates of the Imperial Palace. Choshu lost the so-called Battle at the Forbidden Gates and was declared an "Imperial Enemy" for firing its guns upon the palace. The Choshu forces now retreated to their home turf at the far southwestern end of the main Japanese island defeated but by no means vanquished. Shinsengumi The Shogun's Last and Most Dreaded Samurai Corps Back to Table of Contents -- Samurai History Papers # 1 Back to Samurai History Papers List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2004 by Romulus Hillsborough. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com |