Takechi Hanpeita, the leader of the Tosa Loyalist Party who was determined to overthrow the Tokugawa Bakufu and restore Imperial rule, had languished in prison for nearly two years. On the 29th day of the Fifth Month of the Japanese year corresponding to 1865, he wrote to his wife from his squalid prison cell that “to lay down one’s life for one’s country or for one’s liege lord is true bushido.” Soon thereafter he was ordered to commit seppuku on the evening of the 11th day of the intercalary Fifth Month. Sentenced to die by his own hand based on trumped up charges of political crimes, he nonetheless took solace in the fact that he was at least given the honor of dying as a samurai, rather than be beheaded as a common criminal.“ [T]he heart of a samurai [must be] as solid as a rock,” he wrote. Now he would have the chance to live up to his words. His stunning seppuku, which he performed with such bravery that even his enemies witnessing the event “were left speechless,” is depicted in detail in Chapter 14 of Samurai Assassins.
[Takechi Hanpeita is the focus of Part II of Samurai Assassins. His self-portrait, which he produced in his prison cell, appears in Samurai Assassins courtesy of Kochi Prefectural Museum of History.]
