This memorial stone monument was erected by former Shinsengumi officer Nagakura Shinpachi and others at Takinogawa in Kita-ku, Tokyo in 1876, around nine years after the fall of the Tokugawa Bakufu, to memorialize 106 former Shinsengumi corpsmen. Engraved on the front of the monument are the names of the late commander, Kondo Isami, and the late vice-commander, Hijikata Toshizo, set apart from the other 104 men, whose names appear on either side of the stone. After Kondo was executed by the army of the new Imperial government in the spring of 1868, his headless corpse is believed to have been buried at this site.

Kondo and Hijikata are the focus of The Shogun’s Last Samurai Corps: The Bloody Battles and Intrigues of the Shinsengumi, the new and expanded edition of my previous book on the Shinsengumi, due to be released in March 2021.

[The oil painting of Kondo Isami, based on the more famous photograph, belongs to the KojimaMuseum in Machida, Tokyo.]