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.]