Based on his resistance to the social iniquities and restraints under the Tokugawa Bakufu – i.e., the shogun’s government – Sakamoto Ryōma changed history through a series of unparalleled historical achievements: the founding of Japan’s first trading company; the brokering of a military-political alliance between the Bakufu’s most formidable enemies; and his great plan for peaceful restoration of Imperial rule.

After the shōgun’s historical announcement at his castle in Kyōto to relinquish power to the Imperial Court based on Ryōma’s peace plan, the situation in Kyōto was dangerous and volatile, with samurai “thirsty for blood” gathered there from all over the country, recalled Watanabé Atsushi, a Bakufu samurai who later claimed to have killed Ryōma. “Since Sakamoto was no good for the Bakufu or the Imperial Court…, I thought we had to kill him,” said Imai Nobu, a cohort of Watanabe’s, decades later.

Read more about Ryoma’s assassins and their motives in my new book, Samurai Assassins.