Okada (“Man-Cutter”) Izō was one of the three most notorious assassins of the Bakumatsu era. As I wrote in my forthcoming Samurai Assassins, “… 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.’”

Okada Izō was Takechi Hanpeita’s favorite fencing student and, as it turned out, his “chief hit man” during a spree of assassinations in Kyoto and elsewhere.

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