Shinsengumi:
Still Full of Fight
by Romulus Hillsborough
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Even with the death of Kondo Isami, the Shinsengumi, under the command of Hijikata Toshizo, did not give up the fight. Four days after Kondo's execution in Edo, the oppositionist forces reached Aizu-Wakamatsu in the north, the castle town of the Lord of Aizu, where Hijikata, suffering from a severe gunshot wound to the foot, served as staff officer. In May, twenty-five feudal domains of northern Japan, including Aizu, Yonezawa, Shonai and Sendai, formed a confederation to fight the Imperial forces. On August 22, Imperial troops stormed Aizu-Wakamatsu. After a month of heavy fighting, the castle fell. Meanwhile, Hijikata fled to Shonai, and later to Sendai, to bring the fight further north. Before Hijikata arrived at Sendai, Enomoto Takeaki, former commissioner of the Tokugawa Navy, had sailed into Sendai Bay, in command of eight Tokugawa warships. But the war in the north went badly for the oppositionists. By late September, most of the confederate domains had pledged allegiance to the Imperial government. The oppositionists could no longer remain in Sendai. In October, they sailed aboard Enomoto's ships to the far-northern island of Ezo, modern-day Hokkaido. At Ezo Hijikata was no longer merely the leader of the Shinsengumi, but shared with another man the command of the entire oppositionist army about 2,300 strong. Near the port city of Hakodate, on the southern extremity of the island, facing Tsugaru Strait, they captured Goryokaku, an imposing pentagonal fortress designed after a seventeenth-century French citadel. From Goryokaku the oppositionists controlled the entire island of Ezo. They subsequently declared the independence of their short-lived Ezo Republic, and held an election. Enomoto was elected president of the republic. Hijikata, the peasant's son, was chosen as vice commissioner of the army. But their newfound glory was short-lived. Hijikata must have realized that his forces would ultimately lose. He suspected that Enomoto would pursue a peaceful end to the fighting which he opposed by his very nature. He told his men that if he should make peace with the enemy, he would not be able to face Kondo in the next world. By the following May (1869), he knew that the end was near. He wrote his death poem. To one of his men, he entrusted this poem, a few strands of his hair, two swords, a letter and a photograph of himself. He ordered the man to deliver these mementos to his family's home in Tama. When the man refused, insisting that he would remain behind to fight to the death, Hijikata grew angry and threatened to kill him on the spot. The man obeyed the orders and left Hakodate soon after. Six days later, Hijikata Toshizo, while leading his troops on horseback, was killed by a gunshot wound to the abdomen. The remnants of the Shinsengumi surrendered four days later. Goryokaku fell on May 18. The oppositionists were finally defeated. Conclusion The story of the Shinsengumi is a fascinating one. Over recent years the popularity of the Shinsengumi has surged among young Japanese people, particularly young women. The Shinsengumi is the subject of a year-long historical drama on NHK, a national TV broadcaster in Japan. Enter any bookstore in Tokyo and you'll see numerous books about the Shinsengumi on display. The Shinsengumi are also depicted in comic books and brought to life, however distortedly, in animation. The so-called Shinsengumi boom is probably as big as the Ryoma boom, which started some years earlier. But the contrast is interesting. At one end of the spectrum is a band of killers, the Shinsengumi. At the other end is the peacemaker Sakamoto Ryoma, an expert swordsman who is known to have killed only once in self-defense and with a pistol rather than his sword. The Shinsengumi adamantly supported the shogun, while Ryoma just as adamantly opposed him. Whereas the Shinsengumi fought to the bitter end, Ryoma devised a plan for a bloodless revolution. And despite these great contrasts, both the Shinsengumi and Ryoma are loved and revered by people today and both are an integral part of that most fascinating and important period in Japanese history. 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 |