I know “definitive history” doesn’t sound quite right coming from the author (“laborer” might be a better way to describe me), but that is how my second book about the Shinsengumi is turning out.
I started writing this book in earnest a little more than seven months ago. To finish it, I need to “Think big! Create! Persevere!”
My first book about the Shinengumi is here.
This new book is a challenge! As I’ve said, the more I know, the more I feel I need to know. Not exactly a formula for a quick or easy completion of this project. My previous book was an introduction to the Shinsengumi. The next one will be an historiography. I like the following definition of historiography offered in Encyclopædia Britannica by Richard T. Vann of Wesleyan University:
“[T]he writing of history, especially the writing of history based on the critical examination of sources, the selection of particular details from the authentic materials in those sources, and the synthesis of those details into a narrative that stands the test of critical examination.”
In the Prologue of my previous book, I wrote that the Shinsengumi was commissioned by the Tokugawa Bakufu to restore law and order amid the gathering revolution. “At once reviled and revered, they were known alternately as rōnin hunters, wolves, murderers, thugs, band of assassins, and eventually the most dreaded security force in Japanese history.”
The Shinsengumi was much more than that.
I won’t finish my next book for at least a couple of years.
Think big! Create!
[The above photo of the original Miniature Shinsengumi Banner appears in my previous book, courtesy of Hijikata Toshizo Museum.]
Kyoto Shugoshoku Shimatsu by Yamakawa Hiroshi
This history of the protectorate of Kyoto (Kyoto shugoshoku), by a minister to the daimyo of Aizu, was published in 1911. The protectorate of Kyoto oversaw the Shinsengumi. The office was held by Matsudaira Katamori, daimyo of Aizu.
The 150th anniversary of the assassination of Sakamoto Ryōma is being widely observed this month. On Keiō 3/11/22 (1867), seven days after Ryōma’s assassination, officials of his native Tosa Han issued a formal indictment to the Bakufu accusing the Shingsengumi of the crime. “Four days later,” I wrote in Samurai Assassins, “the Bakufu questioned [Shinsengumi Commander] Kondō Isami. But it was a mere formality. Earlier in the year all Shinsengumi men had been given hatamoto status [hatamoto being vassals of the shōgun], and its commander had direct access to the shōgun. When Kondō testified that the Shinsengumi had nothing to do with the assassinations [including that of Ryōma’s cohort Nakaoka Shintarō], the matter was settled as far as the Bakufu was concerned.” And, in fact, the Shinsengumi had nothing to do with the incident.
Kondō Isami (left) was chief instructor of the style of swordsmanship called Tennen Rishin-ryū, at the Shiekan in Edo. He also taught in his native Musashi province, just east of Edo. His student roster in the Tama district of Musashi exceeded three hundred, Shimozawa Kan noted in his classic Shinsengumi Shimatsuki, published in 1928. Among Kondō’s top students at the Shieikan was Hijikata Toshizō, also from Tama. The two were close friends before they established the Shinsengumi in Kyōto in Bunkyū 3 (1863). As co-leaders of the Shinsengumi, they complemented each other – though it is hard to say which of them was more ruthless in pursuing and killing their enemies.
[The photos of Kondō and Hijikata appear in my book, Shinsengumi: The Shogun’s Last Samurai Corps, courtesy of the descendants of Satō Hikogorō and Hino-shi-Furusato Hakubutsukan.]