The artwork on the cover of Samurai Assassins depicts Arimura Jizaemon of Satsuma as he is about to deliver the coup de grâce to the shogun’s regent, Ii Naosuké, in the famous Incident Outside Sakurada Gate, at Edo Castle in the Third Month of the Japanese calendar year corresponding to 1860. Ii’s assassination, which kicked off the revolution, was the beginning of the end of the Tokugawa Bakufu.

Osaragi Jiro, in Tennō no Seiki (天皇の世紀), a masterpiece of Bakumatsu-Meiji Restoration history to which I referred in writing this scene, paints a different picture than the one shown on the cover. As I wrote in Samurai Assassins, after Naosuké had been stabbed twice while still in his sedan,

“Arimura tore open the door, grabbed Ii Naosuké by the back of the neck, and pulled him out. He struck the regent with his sword on the top of the head; and as Ii fell forward and tried to get up, Arimura beheaded him.”