While much has been written about practical application versus philosophy in kenjutsu (Japanese swordsmanship), Hijikata Toshizo, vice-commander of the Shinsengumi, practiced kenjutsu to learn to “kill people,” according to Yuki Minizo.*

[The photograph of Hijikata Toshizo is used in Shinsengumi: The Shogun’s Last Samurai Corps, courtesy of the descendants of Sato Hikogoro and Hino-shi Furusato Hakubutsukan Museum.]

*Yuki Minizo is sometimes identified as a former Shinsengumi corps. However, technically he did not serve in the Shinsengumi. He was recruited by Kondo Isami after the Shinsengumi was reorganized as the Koyōchinbutai (“Pacification Corps”) in early 1868.

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The Shinsengumi was the shogun’s paramount police force. In its attack on the Ikedaya Inn in Kyoto in the summer of 1864, the Shinsengumi foiled a planned uprising against the Bakufu, the shogun’s government, by Choshu-led rebels, who represented the so-called Imperial Loyalism movement. The rebels’ purpose was to regain the control over the Imperial Court they had lost in the coup of the previous summer, by which Choshu had been driven from Kyoto; to expel the “foreign barbarians” from Japan, which the Emperor himself desired; and to ultimately overthrow the Bakufu.

Numerous rebels including several of their leaders perished during the so-called Ikedaya Incident, many at the hands of the Shinsengumi. But Shinsengumi Commander Kondo Isami and his men were no less determined to “expel the barbarians” than the rebels themselves; nor were they any less fervent in their Imperial Loyalism.

[The photograph of the miniature Shinsengumi Banner is used in my previously published Shinsengumi: The Shogun’s Last Samurai Corps, courtesy of Hijikata Toshizo Museum.]

As commander of the Shinsengumi, Kondo Isami was devoted to serving the shogun and his government, the Tokugawa Bakufu. The office of shogun was conferred by the Emperor; but Kondo, in his staunch loyalty to the shogun and the Bakufu, was devoted to killing or arresting the Bakufu’s enemies – i.e., so-called Imperial Loyalists hell-bent on overthrowing the Bakufu and replacing it with a new Imperial government. Therefore, some might assume that Kondo felt no loyalty to the Emperor. Nothing could be further from the truth! – as I will demonstrate in my next book.

[The photograph of Kondo Isami is in my previously published Shinsengumi: The Shogun’s Last Samurai Corps, courtesy of the descendants of Sato Hikogoro and Hino-shi Furusato Hakubutsukan Museum.]

Today I finally completed the long and complex chapter about the Shinsengumi’s attack on the Ikedaya inn in Kyoto on Genji 1/6/5 (July 8, 1864). It was a turning point in the revolution. Over a year before that, on the 10^thday of the Third Month of Bunkyu (April 27, 1863), sixteen men, nine of whom studied the Tennen Rishin style of kenjutsu, “art of the sword,” under future Shinsengumi Commander Kondo Isami, signed a petition to Matsudaira Katamori, daimyo of Aizu and the Bakufu’s protector of Kyoto, for permission to guard the shogun in Kyoto. They were joined by five men led by another highly skilled swordsman named Serizawa Kamo, and three others, for a total of seventeen. Fourteen of them, comprising the respective groups of Kondo and Serizawa, were the founding members of the Shinsengumi.

Just about finished with this complicated and complex chapter, focusing on the Shinsengumi’s raid on the Ikedaya inn in the summer of 1864. I’ve been working on it for about three months – taking special care to give the most accurate and authentic account as possible of this extremely important event. As I wrote in my previous book about the Shinsengumi: Through the raid on the Ikedaya, the Shinsengumi probably delayed the Meiji Restoration by a year or so. “Had the Shinsengumi not achieved a great victory by attacking the Ikedaya,” Nagakura Shinpachi, a principal of the Shinsengumi, reportedly claimed, “the life of the Tokugawa Bakufu would have been that much shorter.” But the outrage it ignited among the anti-Bakufu side, led by Choshu, served to shore up a consensus for an all-out war against the Bakufu, marking a turning point in the revolution. And it is this fact that gives pause to the widespread notion that the Ikedaya Incident delayed the overthrow of the Bakufu and the Meiji Restoration, and rather lends support to the argument that it actually hastened that outcome.

“Think big! Create! Persevere!”