Both Shinsengumi leaders favored swords of greater than average length. Samurai generally carried two swords, one long and one short. The cutting edge of the average “long sword” measured about 2 feet, 2.5 inches. In the battle at Kofu in the spring of 1868, Kondo Isami reportedly wielded a particularly long sword of about 2 feet, 9 ½ inches. In the fall of that year, Hijikata Toshizo reportedly carried an even longer sword. As I wrote in Shinsengumi: The Shogun’s Last Samurai Corps, during the rebellion in the north, Hijikata, as a condition for accepting the command of confederate troops, demanded that his orders be strictly obeyed. “If any man defies [my] orders, . . . , I, Toshizo, will have to strike him down with my sword,” which he said was nearly three feet long.

[The above photo of the original Miniature Shinsengumi Banner appears in my Shinsengumi: The Shogun’s Last Samurai Corps, courtesy of Hijikata Toshizo Museum.]

The Shinsengumi was a police force organized in the spring of 1863 to guard the shogun, quell sedition and restore law and order in the Imperial capital of Kyoto during the upheaval of the 1860s. The shogun’s government, the Tokugawa Bakufu, was overthrown less than five years later. That the Shinsengumi was on the wrong side of history has no bearing on the allure of its two leaders, Kondo Isami and Hijikawa Toshizo, in the 21^stcentury. Which is one of the reasons that I wrote the only historical narrative about the “shogun’s last samurai corps” in English, and I am currently writing a more in-depth history of the Shinsengumi to be published in the future.

[The above photo of the original Miniature Shinsengumi Banner appears in my Shinsengumi: The Shogun’s Last Samurai Corps, courtesy of Hijikata Toshizo Museum.]