Shinsengumi. Romulus Hillsborough

men, “Kondō [had] a strange flicker in his eyes ... and after some time summoned Nagakura§ and three others” and told them to “be on guard” regarding the four new recruits.

      Near the end of September, Kondō discovered the truth about his four new recruits. “We can’t let them get away,” Kondō said, and ordered Nagakura, Okita, and others to “kill them immediately.” Nagakura and two others found two of the Chōshū men sunning themselves on the long wooden veranda at the Maekawa residence. With their swords they swiftly killed both men, stabbing them through from behind. Meanwhile, Okita and his fellow assistant vice commander, Tōdō Heisuké, burst into another room of the house in pursuit of two more of the enemy, who escaped through a window. An additional two corpsmen, also uncovered as Chōshū spies, attempted to flee. One was captured. The other escaped after being cut from behind. “We tried to bring the captured man ... to Commander Kondō [for questioning],” Nagakura recalled. When he refused to cooperate, Harada Sanosuké, known for his short temper, drew his long sword, and with one swift stroke beheaded him. “Not only were we commissioned to round up the vagrants who swaggered through the streets of Kyōto, but [now] we were also invested with the authority to kill them. Shishi hiding in Kyōto and Ōsaka feared the commander of the Shinsengumi as if he were a demon.”

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* The Kamakura Bakufu ruled from 1192 to 1333.

† Rank in the Tennen Rishin style was awarded students in the following order of graduating proficiency: kirikami, mokuroku, chūgokui mokuroku, menkyo (a license to serve as assistant instructor) and shinan menkyo (a license to open a dōjō and teach one’s own students). It normally took a student five years of dedicated and rigorous training to attain the rank of menkyo.

‡ Isami is written with one Chinese character, which, quite appropriately, means “courage.”

§ This was taller than average during mid-nineteenth-century Japan.

¶ Meiji Restoration historian Michio Hirao’s groundbreaking Shinsengumi Shiroku (literally, Historical Record of the Shinsengumi) was first published in 1928, under the original title Shinsengumishi (literally, History of the Shinsengumi). Hirao was first and foremost an historian, more widely known for his writings about Sakamoto Ryōma than about the Shinsengumi. Shortly before completing the Shinsengumi manuscript, in 1928 Hirao interviewed Kondō Isami’s heir, Kondō Yūgorō (seventy-six years old at the time), at the latter’s home at Kami’ishihara, in the Tama region of Tōkyō. Others interviewed by Hirao include members of the Miyagawa family.

* Kan Shimosawa’s Shinsengumi Shimatsuki (literally, Narrative of the Shinsengumi) has long been considered the definitive history of the Shinsengumi. Published in 1928 just before Hirao’s book, Shimosawa’s narrative is partially based on interviews with former corpsmen and other people who had direct contact with the Shinsengumi. Shimosawa, however, was primarily a novelist. He began the preface of his book by stating, “It is not my intention to write history.” Some of his information has been repudiated by more recent studies, whose authors have enjoyed the benefit of over three-quarters of a century of subsequent scholarship unavailable to Shimosawa. Accordingly, like other early historical narratives of the Shinsengumi, Shimosawa’s work is best taken for what it’s worth, and relished for its portrayal of the spirit of the men of Shinsengumi rather than as a faithful history. Nevertheless, as certain of his descriptions capture the essence of this spirit, I feel that they demand an English rendering in this narrative.

† See Appendix I (3).

‡ See Appendix I (4).

§ See Appendix I (5).

¶ See Appendix I (6).

* It is believed to have been established as the official code around the end of May 1865.

† It has been suggested that the Shinsengumi did not start talking to the temple priests until after Yamanami’s death. If this is true, then the matter of Nishihonganji was unrelated to Yamanami’s desertion.

‡ A leader of the Chōshū Loyalists.

§ In his oral recollections, dictated to a newspaper journalist over a two-year period beginning in 1911, Nagakura is referred to by name.

       Of Insult and Retribution