Shinsengumi Commander Kondo Isami was a peasant by birth, a warrior by nature. He was a man of traditional values and a martial mind-set, whose black training robe was embroidered in white on the backside with a large human skull – a symbol of his resolve to die in battle whenever he entered the dojo. He had enlisted in the Roshi Corps [precursor to Shinsengumi] with aspirations of becoming a samurai in the service of the shogun. As leader of the shogun’s most lethal samurai corps he secured a vehicle into the top strata of the Tokugawa hierarchy and indeed historic immortality. (excerpt from Shinsengumi: The Shogun’s Last Samurai Corps, p. 22)

[The photograph of Kondo’s training robe is used in Shinsengumi: The Shogun’s Last Samurai Corps courtesy of Masataka Kojima. The photo of Kondo himself is used courtesy of the descendants of Sato Hikogoro and Hino-shi-Furusato Hakubutsukan.]

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