A Writer's Reminiscence

Mibu Village and the
Spirits of the Maekawa Residence

by Romulus Hillsborough

In October 2003 I traveled to Kyoto to research my book on the Shinsengumi. At that time I visited the Mibu area in the western part of the city ­ which, of course, was known as Mibu Village when the Shinsengumi set up headquarters there in the spring of 1863. At the grand Mibu Temple I visited the gravesite of Shinsengumi Co-Commander Serizawa Kamo and his ally within the corps, Hirayama Goro. The two men were assassinated at Mibu by Hijikata Toshizo, Okita Soji and others ­ by order of the other co-commander, Kondo Isami. Serizawa and Hirayama share the same gravestone, engraved with their names and the date September 18, 1863. (There is some discrepancy as to the precise date of the assassination. Some sources indicate September 16, others September 18.) At the time of my visit the gravesite was adorned with fresh chrysanthemums ­ white, yellow and red ­ under the perpetual and stern gaze of Kondo Isami, whose weathered bronze image (a bust set atop a large piece of stone, to the left side of which is a monument containing a lock of his hair) was erected there in 1971. Near Mibu Temple is the Yagi Residence, where Kondo, Serizawa, Hijikata and other Shinsengumi officers lived. After walking through the inside of the house, I sat in the room where Serizawa had been asleep with his mistress in a drunken stupor the night he was assassinated. The room overlooks a quaint garden, beyond a narrow wooden corridor, through which Hijikata and Okita entered the house, swords drawn and at the ready, to eliminate the only man who challenged Kondo's authority over the corps. After reconstructing in my mind's eye that scene of violence and bloodshed, I proceeded to the nearby Shintokuji Temple, which served as headquarters of the Roshi Corp, the predecessor to the Shinsengumi, recruited by the shogunate in early 1863 to suppress the insurgency in Kyoto. I was informed that the temple was a private residence and not open to the public ­ but that the current residents would kindly make an exception to allow me to view the hall where Kiyokawa Hachiro, leader of the Roshi Corps, had assembled his 250 men to declare, in no uncertain terms, that the corps' true loyalty must rest with the emperor and not the shogun. Presently, the lady of the residence showed me to the hall. Alone, at the center of the tatami-covered floor, I faced the same Buddhist alter where Kiyokawa had once stood in defiance of the shogun's regime. As I conjured up that scene in my mind's eye ­ the spectacle of that ragtag and heady assembly, which included Kondo, Serizawa, Hijikata, Okita, and the other original members of the Shinsengumi ­ I was reminded by the nearby presence of the kind lady that all of those things had happened nearly a century and a half ago, and that I must return soon to my hotel room to get ready for a dinner engagement in town that evening. But first I stopped by the nearby former Maekawa Residence ­ that gated single-storied house where the Shinsengumi had set up its first headquarters in the spring of 1863; where in June 1864 anti-Tokugawa activist Furudaka Shuntaro, under excruciating torture, had disclosed information leading to the notorious slaughter of his comrades-in-arms at the Ikeda'ya inn; and where in February 1865, Shinsengumi Vice Commander Yamanami Keisuke was forced to commit seppuku. I entered the premises through an open gate leading to a courtyard, beyond which was the entrance to the house. But as with Shintokuji, I was courteously informed by a middle-aged woman, whom I assumed was the matron of the house, that the building was a private residence and that the public was invited to enter no further than the spacious and dark entrance hall just beyond the front door, where Shinsengumi-related books and souvenirs were sold. I entered as far as the opposite end of the hall, and as I attempted to get a view of the inner house in the dim light of the late afternoon, I overheard the matron telling a group of tourists that her family had purchased the Maekawa Residence shortly after World War II, and that they had been compelled ­ by the ill-boding presence of spirits of men who had committed seppuku inside ­to hire a Buddhist priest to bless the house. Back to Table of Contents -- Samurai History Papers # 3 Back to Samurai History Papers List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 2005 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