That Sakamoto Ryōma was endowed with an uncanny power of prescience is beyond dispute, as he demonstrated on numerous occasions during the last five years of his life. I have documented these over the years, starting with the biographical novel Ryoma: Life of a Renaissance Samurai (Ridgeback Press 1999), and more recently in Samurai Revolution (Tuttle 2014) and my new book Samurai Assassins (McFarland 2017).

On the 150th anniversary of Ryōma’s assassination let’s consider two striking examples of his apparent foresight of his own death:

• In a letter to his sister, Sakamoto Otomé, about two and a half years before his death, he wrote: “I don’t expect that I’ll be around too long. But I’m not about to die like any average person either. I’ll only die when big changes finally come, when even if I continue to live I’ll no longer be of any use to the country.” (quoted in Samurai Revolution)

• In a letter to a friend written four days before his assassination in Kyōto, he alluded to the great danger facing Japan under the Bakufu and urged his friend to be careful for his life. “Now is the time for us to act. Soon we must decide on our direction, whether it lead to pandemonium or paradise.” (quoted in Samurai Assassins)

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the assassination of Sakamoto Ryōma, which is the subject of Part III of my new book, Samurai Assassins. The murder of a genius of Ryōma’s caliber could not but have altered history. In writing the first in-depth account and analysis of the incident in English, I scoured all available important sources, including primary sources: Ryōma’s letters; testimonies and writings by, and interviews of, his alleged assassins; and accounts from people who were either present at the assassination scene or who arrived shortly after the fact. Excerpted below (without footnotes) is the opening paragraph of Part III (Chapter 15: Ryōma’s Greatest Achievements):

“Since Sakamoto was no good for the Bakufu or the Imperial Court…, I thought we had to kill him.” These words of Imai Nobuo of the Kyōto Mimawarigumi, a Bakufu security force, are as ironic as they are tragic—and in fact Sakamoto Ryōma’s assassination is the greatest tragedy of the Meiji Restoration. Sakamoto Ryōma and Nakaoka Shintarō were assassinated on the night of Keiō 3/11/15 (1867), about a month after the shōgun had announced his intention to abdicate and restore Imperial rule based on Ryōma’s peace plan. After the shōgun’s historical announcement, the situation in Kyōto remained dangerous and volatile, with samurai “thirsty for blood” gathered there from all over the country, recalled Watanabé Atsushi, another Mimawarigumi man who, like Imai, later claimed to have killed Ryōma. “We couldn’t let our guard down.” Whenever they were out on the street they were “vigilant” and “kept the mouths of our sword sheaths loose,” ready to draw the blades at any time.

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Part II of my new book, Samurai Assassins, is the first in-depth biographical treatment in English of Takéchi Hanpeita, charismatic leader of the Tosa Loyalist Party and mastermind of “divine punishment,” which wreaked terror on the streets of Kyōtō. Takéchi’s important role in the “samurai revolution” is covered in detail, including his meteoric rise to power and his sudden arrest and imprisonment ending with his stunning seppuku (self-disembowelment). I referred to Takéchi’s journals, contained in an early biography published in 1912; and more heavily to his letters from jail to his wife and cohorts on the outside. To the best of my knowledge, Takéchi’s letters have rarely, if ever, been used by Western writers. (Takéchi Hanpeita’s self-portrait, painted in prison at Kōchi in 1864, is courtesy of Kochi Prefectural Museum of History.)

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the assassination of Sakamoto Ryoma, the architect of the relatively peaceful overthrow of the Tokugawa Bakufu. To bolster itself against its formidable enemies – in retrospect a vain attempt to stem the tide of history – the Bakufu established the security force Mimawarigumi, literally “Patrolling Corps,” in the spring of 1864, less than four years before its final collapse. Like the Shinsengumi, its more famous rival within the Tokugawa hierarchy, the Mimawarigumi was established to restore law and order in the Imperial capital of Kyoto. This was just months after the Shinsengumi had distinguished itself in the notorious attack on the rebels at the Ikedaya inn in the Kawaramachi district of Kyoto, just seven short blocks north of the soy purveyor called the Omiya. One of the vice-commanders of the Mimawarigumi was Sasaki Tadasaburo, who around three and a half years later would lead a small group of swordsmen to the Omiya to kill Ryoma.

Ryoma’s assassination remains shrouded in mystery. I focused on Ryoma’s assassins, their motives, and the actual attack in Part III of my new book, Samurai Assassins.