“It was only because of Ryo that I survived.” 此龍女がおれバこそ、龍馬の命ハたすかりなり。
After Sakamoto Ryoma had overseen the conclusion of the military-political alliance between Satsuma and Choshu in Kyoto in early 1866, thus hastening the fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate (Bakufu) less than two years later, his life was in danger. Though the Satusma-Choshu Alliance was still secret, and so unknown to the Bakufu, the Tokugawa authorities in Kyoto had been after him for “going back and forth between Bakufu enemies Satsuma and Choshu,” Ryoma wrote to his family later that year.
On the day after the alliance was concluded, Ryoma was attacked by Tokugawa police, at an inn called the Teradaya, in Fushimi just outside of Kyoto. He had arrived at the inn late at night. As he was about to sleep in an upstairs room, a young maid, Narasaki Ryo (better known simply as Oryo), whom Ryoma had met and married about a year and a half earlier, was downstairs soaking in a hot bath. Following is an excerpt from my Samurai Revolution:
Oryo as a young woman, according to a descendent of her second husband, whom she married after Ryoma’s death. (Miyaji Saichirō. Sakamoto Ryōma Shashinshū. Tōkyō: Shinjinbutsu Ōraisha, 1986).
The bathroom was located at the rear of the house, near a narrow corridor leading to the rear staircase. Oryō heard the assailants break in, and, as she recalled over thirty years later:
There was a thumping sound, and before I had much time to think about it, someone thrust a spear through the bathroom window, right by my shoulder. I grabbed the spear with one hand, and in an intentionally loud voice, so that I could be heard upstairs, yelled, “Don’t you know there’s a woman in the bath? You with the spear, who are you?” “Be quiet,” [a voice demanded], “or I’ll kill you.” “You can’t kill me,” I hollered back, jumped out of the bathtub into the garden [outside], and still wet and throwing on just a robe, with no time to even put on my sash, ran barefoot [to warn the two men upstairs]. [end excerpt]
Ryoma, with Miyoshi Shinzo, a samurai of Chofu (branch house of Choshu), assigned by the Choshu men as Ryoma’s bodyguard, fought their way out of the inn and managed to escape, though Ryoma was wounded. The enemy, he reported in a separate letter to his sister, Otome, “cut the base of my right thumb, split open the knuckle of my left thumb, and hacked my left index finger to the knuckle bone.” And giving credit were credit was due (in full Ryoma fashion), he wrote, “It was only because of Oryo that I survived.”
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For more details about the Satsuma-Choshu Alliance and Sakamoto Ryoma’s narrow escape from the Teradaya inn, see Samurai Revolution.
