Shinsengumi | The Shogun's Last Samurai Corps

Since its establishment in 1603, the chief concern of the Tokugawa Shogunate was the continuance of its own power. To this end, the dynasty's founder Tokugawa Ieyasu, devised systems, laws and regulations designed to stymie the power of their potential rivals, namely, the Imperial Court and the roughly 170 feudal lords, or daimyo, who ruled the fiefdoms spread across the Japanese islands of Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu. The most notable means of controlling the daimyo was the sankin kotai system, or alternate attendance, under which every daimyo was required to maintain a residence in the Shogunate capital of Edo, and live there every other year. Even when they were resident in their own domains, they were required to leave their wives and heirs in Edo as hostages. The yearly processions the daimyo were forced to make between their domains and Edo were carried out according to exacting rules and specifications and, along with the cost of maintaining their Edo residences, were a great financial burden that prevented the daimyo from amassing sufficient funds to build up a military force strong enough to overthrow the Shogun. As for the Emperor, he and his court were isolated physically and politically in Kyoto. In 1613, the first Tokugawa Shogun promulgated a code of regulations, the which granted the emperor a modest monthly income that made his economic status not much better than that of a lesser feudal lord, curtailed his powers and rights (the only prerogative left to the emperor was the right to designate the names of each reign), and put his court under strict supervision.


Through these and other draconian measures, the Shoguns maintained control of their realm for over 250 years. "Other draconian measures" would include those designed to prevent foreign influences outside their control from entering the equation, such as: making it a capital crime to leave or enter Japan; outlawing the building of ocean-going ships; limiting foreign trade to only China and the Netherlands; and even making it a crime to teach the Japanese language to foreigners.

But in 1853, globalization finally caught up with the Shogunate in the person of Commodore Matthew Perry when he steamed into Uraga Harbor with his "Black Ships." Over the next five years, the Shogunate was forced to sign a series of so-called "unequal treaties" with the United States and other Western powers. This fact rather gave the lie to the Shogun's full title which means, "Barbarian-Subduing Generalissimo."

Enter the shishi, self-proclaimed "men of high purpose." They reproached the Shogunate for what they saw as its treachery and cowardice in appeasing the foreigners, and pledged loyalty to the emperor--of their own accord--whom had become a quasi-religious figure and symbol of a true and pure "Japan." At this time, Japan had a population of about 30,000,000. From 5%~6% of the population were members of the samurai class, including women and children. It's difficult to say precisely how many of these were the young, male, lower ranking samurai who were the typical shishi, but a large number of them abandoned their lords, families and domains to join in the sonno joi movement. being the home of the emperor, Kyoto was a natural magnet for these "loyalists." The loyalist movement brought national attention to itself in March of 1860 when eighteen shishi (all but one of whom were from Mito Domain, the seat of Japanese nativist Kokugaku Studies) assassinated Ii Naosuke, the shogunal Regent and de facto ruler of Japan, as he was about to enter the Sakurada Gate of the shogunal castle. According to Marius B. Jansen, Professor Emeritus of Japanese History at Princeton:

"The Mito shishi had first prepared a lengthy document explaining their action; it serves as a useful guide to what it meant to be a loyalist in 1860. There was not, as yet, any expression of determination to do away with the bakufu. Instead, the Regent was blamed personally for the evils of recent policy: his mistakes had resulted in a crime against the nation, and not only against the Tokugawa--that of admitting the foreigners to Japan. The Regent had disregarded the Imperial will, and this had led to a situation in which all Tokugawa feudal retainers should turn with shame and penitence to the Sun Goddess at her great shrine at Ise. In the face of such outrages 'the highest duty of all' could be met only by resolute steps to drive out the barbarians. But, instead of taking steps to that end, the Regent had punished and humiliated those who had sought to keep him from his errors...Such immoral policies had required the death of Ii Naosuke."

Ii Naosuke had been appointed regent, or tairo, just two years earlier, four months before the death of the ailing thirteenth shogun, Tokugawa Iesada. A tairo was appointed when the shogun, for what ever reason, was unable to govern effectively. Ii engineered the succession of twelve-year-old Tokugawa Iemochi as the fourteenth shogun. This was a move which kept him in power and angered the reformist daimyo who had urged that a capable twenty-one-year-old named Hitotsubashi Keiki be chosen to succeed the childless Iesada. After succeeding in getting his candidate chosen, Regent Ii Naosuke cracked down with an iron fist on everyone he considered to be an enemy of the Tokugawa Shogunate--singling out for special attention those who had supported the candidacy of Hitotsubashi Keiki, and leaders of the Imperial loyalist movement--in what came to be known as the Ansei Purge. This made him a much hated man, especially in Mito, from whence Hitotsubashi Keiki hailed. But, even though his methods were questionable, he did have the best interests of the nation at heart, as the following contemporary document attests:

"Fighting [the foreigners] and being defeated, and [as a result] having our country rent asunder, would bring the worst possible disgrace upon our nation. Which would be the graver--refusing [a treaty] and causing ourselves eternal disgrace, or concluding a treaty without imperial sanction, and so sparing our nation from eternal disgrace? At the present time neither our coastal defenses nor our armaments are sufficient. Our only choice for the time being is to concede [to a treaty] as the lesser of two evils. The aim of the Imperial Court is to avoid disgrace. The Bakufu has been entrusted with the administration of the country. Those who administer the affairs of state must sometimes act with expediency as occasion demands. However, Naosuke is determined to bear upon himself the responsibilities of the grave crime of not obtaining imperial sanction.

The Tokugawa Shogunate was correct in its assessment of the situation, but Regent Ii's assassination did nothing to quell the unrest roiling the country. In fact, his death left a power vacuum, and the situation would only become more volatile until the demise of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1867.

Commenting on the world view of the samurai who took part in the first Japanese fact-finding mission to the United States, conducted in 1860, Masao Miyoshi (Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature at UCSD) explains that:

"Although during the Tokugawa era the Japanese were accustomed to thinking of their feudal domains as autonomous, independent 'countries,' there were occasions when they saw Japan as a whole, particularly in its relation to the outside world. And as long as Japan was regarded as a comprehensive unit, it was the 'divine state' as against the 'barbarians'...to add to these circumstances, the orthodox Chu Hsi school of Confucianism (which encourages Sinophilism) was being attacked with increasing fervor by the restless students of kokugaku ('national studies'), the Mito nationalists, and others. The influence of Kamo Mabuchi, Motoori Norinaga, Hirata Atsutane, was rapidly spreading among scholars and students. Their theory of emperor worship, as we have already seen, converged with other forces into ideological justification for restoration of imperial rule in 1867. What evolved with such resentment--against the background of Western military threats--was an intensely passionate mythical nationalism."

Japan has a long history of xenophobia. It started long before 1860, and today--150 years later--has yet to disappear. Many apartment listings in Japan specify "no pets or foreigners," and Japan's second best-selling book of 2005 (behind Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince) was a Nihonjinron tract called The Dignity of the Nation which claims that only Bushido can save the world. Given this reality, it's not surprising that xenophobia was a driving factor behind the unrest of the Bakumatsu era.

Writing about the reaction to Ii Naosuke's assassination in Tosa Han, one of the domains--along with the other southwestern domains, Choshu Han and Satsuma Han--that was instrumental in finally toppling the Tokugawa Shogunate, Marius B. Jansen explains that:

"...the assassination of the Regent Ii affected the lower samurai who had political ideas most dramatically of all. Some of them, at least, began to see the possibility of changes in their personal and collective position...Their primary motivation, however, seems to have been an obscurantist hatred of foreigners which they related to their veneration for the Kyoto court. Lacking responsibility for negotiation and government, full of enthusiasm for the martial values of their own culture without being encumbered by much knowledge about the strength of West, these loyalists were willing to trust in the strength of sword and spirit to repel the hated Westerners. Their thought was not yet firmly anti-Tokugawa, but it was becoming fiercely partial to the Kyoto court. In this the Tosa men were typical of their colleagues in other southwestern han."

Even though the Shinsengumi took the side of the Tokugawa Shogunate against the shishi they came from similar backgrounds, and also considered themselves "men of high purpose." They certainly were no less xenophobic than their peers. The main difference between the two groups of young, martially-skilled, lower-ranking samurai was regional. The Shinshingumi men hailed mostly from Edo and its environs, while the Imperial loyalists were typically from southwestern Japan, principally the three domains of Choshu, Satsuma and Tosa. The Shinsengumi's main enemies in Kyoto were Imperial loyalists from Choshu. Most of the rebels they fought in the famous sword fight at the Ikedaya Inn were Choshu ronin, though a number of them hailed from Tosa and Satsuma.

A prominent contemporary figure, Katsu Kaishu, sums up the climate of the times nicely in his history of the Tokugawa's downfall:

"Since the time that the American warships arrived at Uraga in 1853, public opinion became divided between the advocates of war and peace, so that a decision could not be made either way. At the time the Bakufu decided to open the country, and gradually did so. There were many people, including feudal lords, who resented this. They said the Bakufu was forced by barbarians to open the country because of its cowardice and weakness, and that this was why the Bakufu submitted to this humiliation. They no longer believed in the Bakufu. There was a heated argument everywhere. People were killing foreigners, and assassinating government officials."

Kondo Isami was a formidable opponent in a sword fight and a forbidding personality. Romulus Hillsborough, the author of Shinsengumi, The Shogun's Last Samurai Corps, says of him, "Perhaps the most brutal killer in the corps was the commander." One of Kondo Isami's former mistresses, reminiscing about the violent lives of the corpsmen, had this to say about him:

"He was fearsome even when drinking. 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."

Kondo Isami was born in Musashi Province on November 9, 1834. His name at birth was Miyagawa Katsugoro. His father was a peasant, but well off financially. In fact, he was well enough off to be able to build a martial arts training hall at his home and hire a fencing master to instruct his three sons in the Tennen Rinshin style of kenjutsu. The instructor, the master of a minor fencing school in Edo, was impressed by the fencing skills of the youngest son, Katsugoro. Not having a son of his own, he got permission from Katsugoro's father to adopt the boy as his heir (a common practice in Japan even today). The instructor was a samurai named Kondo Shusuke. To make a long story short, by the age of 27, Miyagawa Katsugoro had become Kondo Isami, a samurai and the master of a successful kenjutsu dojo. Two years later, in 1863, Kondo Isami and seven of his top swordsmen joined the Roshigumi in order, he said, to "vent [his] long-held indignation" toward the foreign intruders.

As mentioned above. Kondo Isami and twelve others broke with the Roshigumi when Kiyokawa Hachiro revealed that his true agenda was not to represent the Tokugawa Shogunate's interests in Kyoto, but rather to expel the foreigners at all costs--no matter who got in the way of that objective. These thirteen defectors were mostly from either Musashi Province, like Kondo himself, or Mito Han and felt a special loyalty to the shogun. They had joined the Roshigumi and come to Kyoto with the dual goal of protecting the shogun and expelling the foreigners.

This act of defection from the Roshigumi, and show of loyalty to the shogun, was the genesis of the Shinsengumi. Their ranks soon swelled to number over twenty expert swordsmen and, at the peak, reached as high as two hundred. In the beginning, there were three factions, the largest of which was headed by Kondo. The other two were headed by Serizawa Kamo and Tonouchi Yoshio respectively. Tonouchi Yoshio had a very short career with the Shinsengumi--he was dispatched by Kondo and Serizawa over a difference in philosophy about two weeks after they'd formed the group, which hadn't even yet been given the name "Shinsengumi"; at the beginning they called themselves the "Mibu Roshigumi." Serizawa met the same fate five months later; he was assassinated on Kondo's orders, still in a stupor from all the food and alcohol he'd consumed only hours earlier at a party thrown by Kondo and his lieutenant, Hijikata Toshizo.

The order to assassinate Serizawa originated with Matsudaira Katamori, the Daimyo of Aizu Han, Protector of Kyoto, and Kondo Isami's boss. At any rate, there was little love lost between Kondo and Serizawa, and with him out of the way, Kondo Isami became the undisputed leader of the Shinsengumi.

To say he ruled with tough love is putting it mildly. Nagakura Shinpachi, a member of Kondo's dojo who was one of the seven men who joined the Roshigumi along with the master, wrote in his memoir that, "He treated our comrades at Mibu headquarters as if they were his vassals. If they did not listen to him, he would resort to the sword." But Kondo Isami would not have had the many loyal followers he did if he had attempted to lead by fear alone. He was not a man to be trifled with, but he was also generally liked for his straightforward manner and a quality he evinced called "ninjo." Ninjo means "humanity," "compassion" or "warmheartedness" and is highly valued by the Japanese--and is even considered by some to be an intrinsically Japanese value.

In the latter days of the Shinsengumi, when the future of the Tokugawa Shogunate looked bleak indeed, the Shinsengumi had quit Kyoto, and Kondo Isami was traveling back east toward Edo, he confided in a traveling companion--a high-ranking Tokugawa official--that he was gladdened at the prospect of a reunion with his wife and daughter because, "I did not expect to ever see them again." But that, at the same time, he felt ashamed of his happiness because it was, "unbecoming of a warrior in such difficult times as these." The official reassured him, saying that it was only natural for a man to want to see his family: "That's ninjo. No matter how strong the warrior, unless he is endowed with ninjo, he is no more than a beast."

The following is excerpted from Wikipedia's Shinsengumi article:

"The members of the Shinsengumi were highly visible in battle due to their distinctive uniforms. Following the orders of Shinsengumi captain Serizawa Kamo, the standard uniform consisted of the haori (pictured above) and hakama over a kimono, with a white cord called a tasuki crossed over the chest and tied in the back. The function of the tasuki is to prevent the sleeves of the kimono from interfering with moving the arms. The uniqueness of the uniform was most evident in the haori, which was colored asagiiro (generally light blue, but can also be light yellow). The haori sleeves were trimmed with "white mountain stripes", resulting in a very flashy outfit, quite unlike the usual browns, blacks, and greys found in warrior clothing. In the midst of a fight, the uniforms of the Shinsengumi provided not only a means of easy identification, but also a highly visible threat towards the enemy."

Like Kondo Isami, Hijikata Toshizo was the youngest son of a wealthy Musashi Province peasant. He learned kenjutsu from Kondo Isami's adoptive father and Kondo Isami himself in a private dojo at his rich brother-in-law's house, and became an official member of Kondo Isami's dojo in 1859.

He was a handsome man, as can be seen from this 1868 photo. Though, or perhaps because, the two men were drastically different in appearance, manner, and personality, he became Kondo Isami's closest friend and confidant. When people of his home village heard reports of so much blood being let by him and his fellow Shinsengumi members in kyoto, they were incredulous because, "he was such a gentle person." But according to Kan Shimosawa, author of the 1928 History of the Shinsengumi, "Toshizo was a different man with a drawn sword in his hand."

But it was not only in the heat of battle that Hijikata could be ruthless. At this time, torture was the usual method of extracting information from captured enemies. Hijikata was able to extract a confession from an unfortunate Imperial loyalist named Furudaka which eventually led the Shinsengumi to the Ikedaya Inn. The following is excerpted from Romulus Hillsborough's Shinsengumi: The Shogun's Last Samurai Corps:

"They brought Furudaka to Mibu headquarters. He was placed in the dank and dim confines of a two-storied storeroom at the Maekawa residence, where he was interrrogated by Kondo and Hijikata. Furudaka refused to speak. According to Nagakura, 'Furudaka had come to Kyoto resolved to die and wouldn't say a word.' He was whipped until the skin on his back was shredded. He 'closed his eyes, clenched his teeth, and passed out, but would not open his mouth.' Finally Hijikata lost patience. He tied Furudaka's hands from behind, and hung him upside down with a heavy rope suspended from a rafter. He drove wooden spikes through the soles of Furudaka's feet. He attached large candles to the spikes and lit the wicks. A steady flow of molten wax flowed down Furudaka's legs. The pain was excruciating. After suffering for nearly an hour, he finally broke down."

But one thing that can be said of Hijikata, he was a loyal soldier who never relinquished his duty to his lord, the Shogun. He died in the Battle of Hakodate on the northern island of Ezo (present-day Hokkaido), hopelessly outnumbered, leading the remnants of the Shinsengumi in a charge against the Imperial forces of the Meiji government which had been established seven months earlier. This was one year after the execution of Kondo Isami and a year and a half after his lord, Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu, had abdicated and recognized the Emperor as the sole ruler of Japan. The date was June 20, 1869. He had written his death poem six days earlier:

"Though my body may decay on the island of Ezo,
My spirit guards my lord in the east."

The Shinsengumi followed a particularly spartan interpretation of bushido, and held "makoto" as their byword. The standard translation of makoto is "sincerity." Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary defines "makoto" this way: "sincerity; a true (single) heart; faithfulness; honesty; fidelity; constancy; devotion."
Sincerity and makoto are not exact equivalents. The main difference between the two words is that "sincerity" lacks the martial connotations that are part and parcel of the word "makoto" as it was used by the Shinsengumi, or for that matter, the Kamikaze pilots in World War II. Saito Kazuaki, a Professor emeritus of English Literature, comments in an essay on Japanese heroes that:

"It [makoto] is the cardinal quality of the Japanese hero, denoting purity of mind and motive, and a rejection of self-serving objectives. It despises pragmatic ways of thinking and doing. It is moral fastidiousness. The rational, not subjective, righteousness of a cause itself is unimportant. What counts most is the honesty with which the hero espouses it...The Japanese respect for makoto tends to assume the presence of readiness for accepting joyfully the final catastrophe in the mind of a Napolean or any other hero. Makoto is an ethical, religious concept"

The word "makoto" can actually be written with three different kanji, or ideograms. The kanji that the Shinsengumi used is made up or two parts that are each full-fledged ideograms in their own right. On it's own, the left side of the character means "speak," and the right side means "become." So visually, this kanji connotes the opposite of "empty words;" it is an excellent pictograph of "sincerity." The idea of "words become" also fits in well with the Bushido derived from Wang Yangming's neo-Confucianism, which conceived of knowledge and action as being an indivisible unity and had, along with Zen Buddhism, an enormous impact on Bushido. "Makoto" is also a watchword of Bushido. For example, a true samurai never did things by half measures. Once he drew his sword, he could not return it to the sheath before drawing blood--in other words, killing his opponent.

The Shinsengumi had a harsh set of prohibitions--believed to have been instituted by Hijikata Toshizo--the punishment for which was severe:

• Violating the Code of the Samurai




• Quitting the Shinsengumi




• Raising money for selfish purposes




• Taking it upon oneself to make accusations




• Engaging in private fights

The penalty for broaching any of these rules was the same: seppuku, also known as harakiri. If they were lucky that is. The samurai considered it an honor to be given the privilege of committing seppuku. Those whom the Shisengumi leaders did not feel to be deserving of this honor were simply beheaded.

The Battle of the Forbidden Gates would be the Shogunate's last military victory. What was more problematic, they were steadily losing the ability to impose their will on the most powerful domains. Two events made this fact embarrassingly clear.

First, their attempt to reinstate the sankin kotai system that had been all but abolished in the Bunkyu reforms of 1862 (the number of days daimyo were required to reside in Edo was reduced to one hundred every three years, and their wives and heirs were free to return home at will) ultimately failed when they were largely ignored by the more powerful daimyo.

Second, the bakufu had committed itself to the foolhardy course of launching a second punitive expedition against Choshu Han. Mark Ravina, author of The Last Samurai, a biography of the real "last samurai," Saigo Takamori, explains the situation from Saigo's perspective:

"Saigo watched these developments with a combination of amusement and horror. The Shogunate, he noted, was run by a 'band of fools' divorced from reality. They were pressing Choshu for concessions using the threat of war, but it was widely known that they were unprepared to fight. 'This is a truly bizarre course of events,' he wrote to Okubo in September of 1865, since 'even if they lose the negotiations at the outset, they cannot go to war.' Watching the shogunate's bizarre approach to Choshu, Saigo began to suspect that the regime would destroy itself."

Kondo Isami, who had traveled to Hiroshima Han on Choshu's eastern border in December of 1865, agreed with Saigo's assessment. Reporting on their readiness, he commented that, "Although the hatamoto have reached Geishu province, they display no fighting spirit whatsoever." Not bothering to hide his disgust, he characterized them as spending their time, "getting souvenirs together" and felt that they, "grew weary just waiting to return east."

As Saigo and Kondo had anticipated, the second Choshu expedition was a debacle for the shogunate. They invaded Choshu in the summer of 1866, but were beaten back on almost every front. Within two months, the Shogunate was reduced to fighting desperately to somehow salvage the situation to avoid complete himiliation. To complicate matters, the shogun Tokugawa Iemochi suddenly died on August 29. In a way, this was a stroke of luck for the shogunate. It gave them a good excuse to call a cease fire, and saved them from having to admit defeat. Iemochi's regent, Hitotsubashi Keiki, succeeded him--taking the name Tokugawa Yoshinobu upon becoming the fifteenth shogun. Yashinobu was a consummate politician and formidable adversary in a war of wits.

But even with an able leader, the future looked none too bright for the shogunate. One development that boded ill was the military alliance between Satsuma Han and Choshu Han. Formed in February of 1866 with the mediation of the famous loyalist leader from Tosa Han, Sakamoto Ryoma, the "Satcho Alliance" seemed unlikely to many as the two domains were traditionally bitter rivals, but as they say, "politics make strange bedfellows." These two powerful domains now plotted the shogun's downfall together, drawing up detailed plans to topple the Shogunate and reinstate the Emperor as the sole ruler of Japan.

On January 30, 1867, there was another momentous change in the political landscape: Emperor Komei suddenly died, from a relapse of smallpox, not three weeks after he had appointed Yoshinobu as shogun. He was succeeded by his fifteen-year-old son, Mutsuhito, better known as Emperor Meiji. This was not good news for the Shogunate as Emperor Komei, for all his xenophobia and the fact that he had issued an edict called "The Order to Expel the Barbarians" in 1863, was at heart a supporter of the status quo, and therefore an ally of the shogun. Anti-shogunal forces, including Saigo Takamori, saw the ascension of the new emperor as an opportunity to engineer a coup. He and two fellow Satsuma Han loyalists, Okubo Toshimichi and Komatsu Tatewaki, managed to obtain a secret imperial decree to "annihilate the traitor Keiki" [Yoshinobu] which, though it bore the emperor's seal, had in fact been forged by Satsuma allies inside the imperial court.

But the politically astute Yoshinobu got wind of this plot and, on the same day, surrendered his "administration" to the emperor. Mark Ravina discusses the shogun's tactical move below:

"This was a brilliant preemptive strike. Keiki's [Tokugawa Yoshinobu's] tactical surrender undermined Satsuma's justification for a coup. But since Keiki's declaration did not mention the office of shogun, it was unclear what authority Keiki was giving up. The Imperial court accepted his resignation on 10/15, [Nov. 9 by Gregorian calendar] but it immediately asked him to serve in his traditional capacity while the court called all major daimyo to Kyoto to discuss political reform."

It was also a clever tactical ploy by the Shogun that he hoped would enable him to retain most, if not all, of his prerogatives and land holdings--approximately four million koku of agricultural land, plus ownership of various mines and jurisdiction over such major cities as Kyoto, Osaka, Nagasaki, and Shizuoka.

But on January 3, 1868, the shogun suffered a major set back. Anti-shogunal forces staged a successsful coup. First, they had troops of Satsuma, Tosa, Hiroshima, Echizen and Owari domains seize the gates of the Imperial palace. Once the palace gates were secured, the young Emperor Mutsuhito read out a "grand edict" to a gathering of the daimyo and key retainers from Satsuma, Hiroshima, Tosa, Fukui, and Owari, announcing nothing less than a new political structure for Japan. The post of shogun was abolished, as were a number of other posts, including that of the Protector of Kyoto.

The Shogunate was officially dissolved, but Tokugawa Yoshinobu still had a large military contingent of troops, castles and ships committed to fighting for the Shogunate's continued existence. On January 6, Yoshinobu evacuated from Kyoto to Osaka Castle, accompanied by the Lords of Aizu and Kuwana, and the Shinsengumi. Romulus Hillsborough describes the Shinsengumi's changed situation thusly:

"With the Protector of Kyoto post abolished, the Shinsengumi were informed that their name would be changed to Shinyugekitai Oyatoi--New Mercenary Guerrilla Corps. They apparently preferred their old name, which was synonymous with their five-year iron rule over the streets of the Imperial Capital. 'We refused the name of "New Guerrilla Corps," and continued to refer to ourselves as "Shinsengumi,"' Shimada Kai recorded in his memoirs. While they kept their name, they relinquished their rule and now joined Aizu and Kuwana in Osaka. Kondo Isami's murderous corps would never return to Kyoto."

Civil war broke out on January 27, 1868 at Toba village and Fushimi town, both located south of Kyoto along the Toba highway. The Tokugawa, Aizu and allied domains deployed 2,500 men at Toba, against a Satsuma force of 900. At Fushimi, the Shogunal forces numbered 3,000, against 725 from Choshu, 500 from Satsuma, and 200 from Tosa. Despite being outnumbered by a ratio of more than two to one, the Imperial forces routed their Shogunal opponents in four days of fierce fighting.

The Imperial loyalists had a distinct psychological advantage in that now they were fighting with the explicit sanction of the emperor. The shogun, on the other hand, was indecisive and contradictory in his leadership. It was one thing to make war against an insubordinate daimyo or nationalistic ronin, but quite another to take up arms against the emperor, the spiritual and religious symbol of Japan. On the third day of the battle, The imperial banner was raised behind the Satsuma and Choshu line. It was a sight that none of those present had ever seen, they knew of the imperial banner only from ancient war chronicles, but it turned the tide of the battle, boosting the morale of the imperial forces and robbing the Tokugawa samurai of their will to fight.

Kondo Isami was unable to take part in the battle as he had been shot and seriously wounded in an ambush set by followers of Ito Kashitaro, a former Shinsengumi officer who had been assassinated by the Shinsengumi in the famous Incident at Aburano Koji. As to how the Shinsengumi fared in this pivotal battle, I'll let Romulus Hillsborough tell the tale:

"While Kondo Isami convalesced in Osaka, his corps, under the command of Hijikata Toshizo, had engaged the enemy form the compound of the Fushimi magistrate. Although they were armed with guns, including one cannon, these expert swordsmen lacked training in artillery techniques. Accordingly, they depended mostly on their swords and spears against the Satsuma artillery forces, who pounded them with cannon fire from a height above the compound. This was the first time that this most dreaded of band of swordsmen had faced a modern artillery unit. The outcome was disastrous. The Shinsengumi lost more than thirty men in the one-sided fight. Among the dead were veteran members Inoue Genzaburo and Yamazaki Susumu. numerous others were wounded. Some deserted."

The survivors retreated to Osaka, where they reunited with Commander Kondo Isami. On February 4, the still convalescing Kondo and 117 remaining Shinsengumi corpsmen boarded two ships, the Fujisan Maru and the Jundo Maru, to sail to Edo. Three of the men who had been wounded in the battle of Toba-Fushimi died en route.
One consequence of this battle for the Shinsengumi was that it convinced Hijikata Toshizo that, "Swords and spears will no longer be of any use in battle. They are simply no match for guns." When the Shinsengumi arrived in Edo, he procured state-of-the-art breech-loading rifles.

In Edo, the Shinsengumi were able to enlist some new recruits and increase their ranks to two hundred. They were officially renamed the Koyochinbutai--Pacification Corps--and put in charge of suppressing uprisings in the Kofu region.

As they traveled along the Koshu-kaido to Kofu, to take possession of Kofu Castle, the famous Kondo Isami and Hijikata Toshizo were much feted and admired. While they were enjoying the attention and festivities, an Imperial force of three thousand soldiers had already occupied Kofu Castle. Kondo sent Hijikata back to Edo to get reinforcements from among the hatamoto, while he and the rest of the Koyochinbutai continued on their way. They arrived in the town of Kastunuma, five miles east of Kofu, on that same day and built themselves a fortified base as best they could in the mountains above the town. Their number was now reduced to just 121 corpsmen due to desertions along the way.

They were attacked by some twelve hundred Imperial soldiers at noon the following day, March 29, 1868. As might be expected, it was a rout that ended in favor of the Imperial troops in a matter of two hours. Not only were the Koyochinbutai vastly outnumbered, they were inexperienced in fighting with the modern cannon and rifles they had been armed with. They finally broke off fighting and scattered into the mountains. At the end of the battle of Koshu-Katsunuma, eight of Kondo's men were dead, with over thirty wounded. The Imperial troops suffered only one fatal casualty, and twelve wounded.

Even after having been badly beaten in the battles of Toba-Fushimi and Koshu-Katsunuma, neither Kondo Isami nor Hijikata Toshizo had lost their will to fight. In fact, as soon as they were back in Edo they started making plans for recruiting and training more troops. By the end of April, their ranks had swelled to 227, and they had set up headquarters at a miso factory in a village called Nagareyama, located in present-day Chiba Prefecture.

The very next morning, April 25, 1868, two hundred imperial troops showed up to investigate, and Kondo Isami was arrested under the alias he'd been using since coming to Edo in February: Okubo Yamato. That evening, Kondo surrendered the Koyochinbutai's weapons: three cannon and 118 rifles, to the imperial officers. He was then taken to the imperial military headquarters at Itabashi for questioning. He continued to refer to himself by his alias at the headquarters, but as luck would have it, a former Shinsengumi samurai by the name of Kano Washio happened to see him there. He had joined the Shinsengumi with Ito Kashitaro but managed escape being assassinated along with him in Aburano Koji. He had also taken part in the ambush of Kondo, to avenge Ito's murder, in which the Shinsengumi commander had been shot before the battle of Toba-Fushimi. He gleefully revealed Kondo's true identity. Recalling the incident more than three decades later, Kano remarked, "I can still see the look on his face. He looked so very horrified."

And of course Kondo would have been horrified; not because he feared execution, but because he knew the enemy would never grant him the honor of performing seppuku. At was at this point that he composed his death poem:

"Submitting to the will of another,
I have nothing to say this day.
I value honor above life.

Ah, the long flashing sword
to which I readily surrender,
and repay my lord's kindness with my life."

He was tried in the presence of representatives from several of the leading han, including Satsuma, Choshu, Tosa, Hikone, and Mito. There was little love lost between them and the Shinsengumi. The representatives of Choshu and Tosa had particularly hard feelings against Kondo as the Shinsengumi had killed scores of their compatriots in Kyoto. Those from Tosa were implacable in their demand for his execution because they still blamed him for the assassinations of Sakamoto Ryoma and Nakaoka Shintaro. One of the Tosa representatives, Tani Tateki, had this to say about Kondo:

"He was a crafty scoundrel who committed evil for many years and killed a countless number of our men. But now he's been arrested and will die.... The old fox has deceived people. But it's one of the funniest stories ever that the old fox came out during the daytime to be caught so easily. The notorious Kondo Isami arrested without a fight--now the other foxes will certainly perish."

Kondo Isami was sentenced to death by decapitation and executed on May 17, 1868.

The following is excerpted from Romulus Hillsborough's Shinsengumi, The Shogun's Last Samurai Corps:

Nagakura Shinpachi:
Of the seven men from Kondo's fencing dojo enlisted in the Roshi Corps, only Nagakura survived the Meiji Restoration. After breaking with Kondo and Hijikata, Nagakura, Harada Sanosuke, and some others formed an opposition militia consisting of about 100 men. They called themselves Seikyotai. Nagakura and Harada served as vice commanders, and many of their subordinate officers were former Shinsengumi members. After the surrender of Edo Castle, the Seikyotai fled north to join the other oppositionists. (Harada returned to Edo. In May he joined the Shogitai in the fighting at Ueno, where he was mortally wounded.)

After the Meji Restoration, Nagakura settled in his ancestral Matsumae on Ezo. He married the daughter of a physician to the former Lord of Matsumae, and took his wife's family name, Sugimura. He served for a number of years as chief kenjutsu instuctor at a local prison. In 1876 Nagakura, with the assistance of Matsumoto Ryojun, erected a shrine in Tokyo's Itabashi district, near the site of Kondo Isami's execution. He dedicated the shrine to the memory of Kondo, Hijikata, and more than one hundred other Shinsengumi men who had died in the years leading up to and immediately followiing the Meiji Restoration. During his final years Nagakura held requiems for the souls of his dead comrades. He died of natural causes in the city if Hotaru on Hokkaido (formerly Ezo) in 1915. He was seventy-six.

During a two-year period starting some four years before his death, Nagakura provided a newspaper journalist with an oral history of the Shinsengumi. Nagakura's oral memoirs were published in serial form by a local newspaper, Hotaru Shinbun, over a three-month period in 1913. Since they were given nearly a half century in retrospect and embellished by the vivid imagination of the journalist, the oral memoirs are more a sensationalized account than a faithful histoical record of the Shinsengumi. Nagakura's more historically accurate written memoirs constitute the only firsthand account of the five year history of the Shinsengumi. Long before his newspaper interview, Nagakura had lent his written memoirs to an acquaintance, who had promised to return them. They were never returned to Nagakura, and, in fact, were lost for decades. They were recently discovered, and published in book form in 1998

Shimada Kai:
Shimada Kai was wounded in the fighting at Aizu. When Goryokaku citadel fell to the Imperial forces, Shimada stood alone, his sword at his side, the Tosho Daigongen insignia wrapped around his waist, in the face of certain defeat, inciting the startled admiration of the enemy. After his capture, he was imprisoned at a Buddhist temple in Hakodate. He was subsequently incarcerated at Nagoya Castle, during which time it is believed that he wrote his famous so-called Shimada Kai Diary, which is actually a chronicle of the five-year history of the Shinsenumi and the following one-year period of civil war ending at Hakodate. After his release in 1873, Shimada returned to Kyoto, where he married a local woman whom he had met during his years in the Shinsengumi. He ignored the urging of his friends to enter service in the Meiji government, instead making a living by working at local shops and teaching kenjutsu. In his old age he served as a security guard at Nishihonganji Temple, the former headquarters of the Shinsengumi. Shimada died of natural causes in 1900, at age seventy two.

Saito Hajime:
Saito Hajime, alias Yamaguchi Jiro, remained in Aizu to fight to the bitter end--as commander of thirteen of the Shinsengumi who had chosen to stay with him. After the fall of Aizu castle, Saito traveled southwest to Takada Han, where he lived quietly for a time. He eventually returned to Tokyo, changed his name to Fujita Goro, and married the daughter of a ranking retainer of the former Lord of Aizu. In 1872 he became a career police officer. He died of a stomach ailment in 1915 at age seventy-one. In defiance of death, he expired sitting upright in an alcove of his living room.

Shinohara Yasunoshin:
Shinohara Yasunoshin fought on the Satsuma side in the battle at Toba-Fushimi. After the Meiji Restoration, he became a business man and, in later life, a devout Christian. His memoirs describe important events regarding the Shinsengumi, including his assassination attempt on Kondo Isami, the assassination of Ito Kashitaro, and the fighting at Aburakoji. Shinohara died of natural causes in 1911 at the age of eighty-three.

• Kondo Isami




• Hijikata Toshizo




• Yamanami Keisuke




• Okita Soji




• Nagakura Shinpachi




• Saito Hajime




• Todo Heisuke




• Harada Sanosuke




• Inoue Genzaburo




• Serizawa Kamo




• Niimi Nishiki




• Hirayama Goro




• Hirama Jusuke