Kondo tended to be “extremely modest,” “favoring swords in black sheathes with wax-colored scabbards,” recalled former Shinsengumi officer Shimada Kai in a short article about Kondo Isami published in 1890.
[The photo of Kondō Isami appears in Shinsengumi: The Shogun’s Last Samurai Corps, courtesy of the descendants of Satō Hikogorō and Hino-shi-Furusato Hakubutsukan.]
The three most notorious assassins of the bloody Bakumatsu era (1853 – 1868)—Okada Izō, Tanaka Shimbé, and Kawakami Gensai—were from Tosa, Satsuma, and Kumamoto, respectively. All three bore the nom de guerre Hitokiri, literally “Man-Cutter”—which is really just another term for “murderer.” Izō of course was the chief hit man of Tosa Loyalist Party leader Takéchi Hanpeita, under whom he studied kenjutsu in Kochi (castle town of the Tosa daimyo) and also at the famed Momonoi Dojo, one of the three most highly reputed kenjutsu schools in Edo, where Takéchi had served as head of students. As I wrote in Samurai Assassins,
The historical record of Okada Izō is scant. The novelist Shiba Ryōtarō writes of the “overly intense physical strength and stamina” with which “Hitokiri Izō” was naturally endowed. By age fifteen, perhaps even before studying under Takéchi, Izō had already started training on his own—not with a bamboo practice sword commonly used in the training hall but with a heavier and lethal oaken sword he had carved himself, “wielding it. . . from morning to night,” with such ferocity that his “body would be wasted,” thus developing extraordinarily powerful arms and the ability to handle a sword with great speed. As Shiba points out, the original purpose of a sword was to kill people. But “in the Tokugawa era it became a philosophy. Izō [however] . . . taught himself fencing as a means of killing.” [end excerpt]
Izō was “intrepid by nature and fond of the martial arts,” wrote Tosa historian Teraishi Masamichi in 1928 (in Tosa Ijinden/“Biographies of Great Men of Tosa”). His sword “attack came swift, like a falcon, as was apparent in his nature—which was why [Takéchi] was so fond of him,” according to an early Takéchi biography published in 1912 (Ishin Tosa Kinnō-shi/“The History of Tosa Loyalism in the Meiji Restoration”).
I have been studying Meiji Restoration history for more than thirty years, since I began research for my novel about Sakamoto Ryōma while living in Tokyo. In all of my books, I have explored the personalities of the leading actors in this history, presenting it as a human drama of epic proportion—thus bringing it to life. My most recent book is Samurai Assassins, published in 2017. As I wrote in the Preface, the book
is more than just a chronicle of “dark murder” [assassination] in the revolution [Meiji Restoration]. It is also an in-depth study of the ideology of the men behind the revolution, including bushidō, the code of the samurai, and the philosophy of Imperial Loyalism, which informed the revolution and would become the foundation of the Emperor-worship of World War II. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first book in English to correlate bushidō and Imperial Loyalism in their respective indispensible roles in the Meiji Restoration. My previous book, Samurai Revolution, is a comprehensive history of the Meiji Restoration and the first ten years of Imperial rule. Samurai Assassins provides an in-depth overview of the Meiji Restoration, while focusing on significant men and events, and ideology, not expatiated in my previous book.
[The assassination of Ii Naosuke is the subject of Part I of Samurai Assassins. One of Ii’s assassins, Arimura Jizaemon of Satsuma, who delivered the coup de grâce, is depicted on the cover of the book. The image is part of a series entitled Kinseigiyuden (“Biographies of Loyal and Courageous Men”) by Ichieisai Yoshitsuya (1822 – 1866), originally published in a magazine called “Nishikie.”]
After languishing in prison for about a year, Takéchi Hanpeita, expert swordsman and leader of the insurgent Tosa Loyalist Party, was “the embodiment of bushido” for his stoicism in face of torture, according to his early biographers. Following is a slightly edited excerpt (without footnotes) from Samurai Assassins:
In his weakened state, Takéchi, suffering from chronic diarrhea and lumbago, sometimes doubted his ability to withstand torture. He wrote to a relative on the outside that no matter how much he ate he continued to get thinner. “I’m even shocked myself to see [how thin] my legs [have gotten].” And he even feared that he had developed pulmonary tuberculosis. Rather than risk the possibility of breaking under torture, he considered taking poison. But at his relative’s advice that he would be shamed in death if he were to behave so cowardly, he determined to nurse himself, restore his strength, and brave the pain. Then even if he were to die under torture, he could demonstrate his superior strength to the world by “subduing” his jailers. But two days later he changed his mind again. Though it might be easy for a man to claim that he would “die under torture” rather than talk, unfortunately the jailers would not kill a prisoner so easily, he wrote. Instead they would “break his arms and legs” and “make him suffer” until he finally talked. Only the toughest of men could withstand it. While claiming to be able to withstand torture “around four or five times,” he doubted his ability to withstand it for days on end. “I might have to bite off my tongue” to keep from talking. And so, he asked his relative to send along some poison after all. Whether or not Takéchi’s request was honored is unknown. But the Loyalist Party leader did not have to resort to poisoning himself because as it turned out he was not tortured. Instead, around eight months later, he was condemned to die by his own hand.
[Takechi Hanpeita is the focus of Part II of Samurai Assassins. His self-portrait, which he produced in his prison cell, appears in Samurai Assassins courtesy of Kochi Prefectural Museum of History.]
“The men of the Shinsengumi . . . have insight . . . and high purpose,” said a supervisor of the Mimawarigumi (“Kyoto Patrol Corps”), a Bakufu security force that briefly rivaled the Shinsengumi. Initially the Shinsengumi “felt contempt” for their rivals, according to a former Mimawarigumi corpsmen.
All I will add here is that I am progressing slowly but very surely with this book.