“Ryoma: Life of a Renaissance Samurai” – The 20th Anniversary (14)

Posted on December 18, 2019 by Romlus Hillsborough

It was 20 years ago this month, December 3, 1999, that a group of us visited Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi at his official residence in Tokyo. Mr. Obuchi was a famous admirer of Sakamoto Ryoma. Our group included five distinguished Japanese gentlemen, all with a unique relationship to Sakamoto Ryoma: Saichiro Miyaji and Kiyoharu Omino, both eminent Ryoma biographers; Dr. Kanetoshi Tamura, then-chairman of the Tokyo Ryoma Society; Kunitake Hashimoto, the “godfather” of Ryoma societies around Japan; and Yasuhiko Shingu, a descendent of Shingu Umanosuke, an original member of Ryoma’s famed Kaientai (Naval Auxiliary Corps), precursor to Mitsubishi.

During the meeting I asked the prime minister to speak about Ryoma and hand out copies of my recently published book at the Group of Eight Summit, which he was scheduled to host in Okinawa the following summer. When the prime minister graciously agreed, I thought that Ryoma was on his way to international stardom. A few months later Mr. Obuchi suffered a stroke from which he never recovered.

A Note On the Assassination of Sakamoto Ryoma: “…actually I did it.” Imai Nobuo

Posted on December 15, 2019 by Romlus Hillsborough

Last week (December 10) marked the 152^ndanniversary of Sakamoto Ryoma’s assassination on the 15^thday of the Eleventh Month of the year on the old Japanese calendar corresponding to 1867. Ryoma and another Tosa man, Nakaoka Shintaro, were hit at the former’s hideout in Kyoto—the house of a purveyor of soy called the Omiya, located in Kawaramachi just across the street from Tosa’s Kyoto headquarters. The most likely suspects were KondoIsami, Hijikata Toshizo, et al of the Shinsengumi. But the actual killers were several men of the Mimawarigumi, another Bakufu police corps in Kyoto. One of them, Imai Nobuo, confessed to the authorities in 1870 that he and others had acted under orders from their commander, Sasaki Tadasaburo, who was also involved. But Imai claimed that he had not had a hand in the actual killings, since he and two others had been downstairs guarding the place while the others went upstairs, where they attacked Ryoma and Nakaoka. Ryoma’s assassination is the subject of Part III of Samurai Assassins. Following is a slightly edited excerpt (without footnotes):

The contents of Imai’s testimony to the government were not publicized until 1912. Therefore, for decades it was generally believed that Ryoma and Nakaoka had been killed by the Shinsengumi. That myth was dispelled in May 1900 with the publication of a magazine article entitled “Sakamoto Ryoma Satsugaisha” (“Sakamoto Ryoma’s Killers”), based on an interview with Imai. In the interview, Imai reiterated information from his testimony. But he also contradicted his testimony,with some clarifications, including the shocking opening statement: “It is generally believed that at the time of the Restoration Sakamoto Ryoma and Nakaoka Shintaro were killed by Kondo Isami and Hijikata Toshizo. History says so and that’s what most people thought at the time. But actually I did it.”

[The photo of Imai Nobu appears in Samurai Assassins, courtesy of Ryozen Museum of History.]

A Note On the Assassination of Ii Naosuké

Posted on December 6, 2019 by Romlus Hillsborough

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.”

A Note On Shinsengumi Commander Kondo Isami

Posted on November 24, 2019 by Romlus Hillsborough

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.]

A Note On “Hitokiri Izō”

Posted on November 22, 2019 by Romlus Hillsborough

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”).