Shinsengumi. Romulus Hillsborough

of things foreign among Emperor Kōmei and his court was based on ignorance. They had never been away from the Imperial Capital, and the emperor rarely left the idyllic confines of his palace. None of them had ever seen the ocean or, of course, the great ships that carried the “barbarians” to Japan. They had heard rumors of the foreigners, ridiculous as they were gruesome. Foreigners were monsters with long noses, round eyes, and red or yellow hair, who partook of human flesh and who harbored unholy designs on the sacred empire of Yamato.

      Their ignorance notwithstanding, the emperor and his court were painfully aware of the Treaty of Nanking. Neither they nor the Loyalist samurai who revered the emperor believed that the encroachment of Western nations would stop with China. If British warships could bring to its knees the great Middle Kingdom, which had stood at the vanguard of civilization and culture since ancient times, certainly Japan faced similar peril.

Many of the Imperial Loyalists were rōnin, samurai who had quit the service of their lord. They claimed that Emperor Kōmei was the true and rightful ruler of Japan, although his ancestors had not held political power for a thousand years. The Loyalists, self-styled shishi—“men of high purpose”¶—professed that the Tokugawa Shōgun was merely an imperial agent whose ancestor had been commissioned by the emperor to protect Japan from foreign invasion. But the present shōgun and his councilors had upset the emperor by failing to deal firmly with the foreigners. If the Bakufu was unable to keep the foreigners out, the emperor and his court must be restored to power to save the nation. National politics gradually developed into a twofold structure: while the Bakufu continued to rule at Edo, the Imperial Court underwent a political renaissance at Kyōto.

      The situation exploded in June 1858—the fifth year of Ansei—when Edo signed a commercial treaty without imperial sanction. The Loyalists cried lése-majesté. They charged treason. They vowed to punish the wicked Tokugawa officials who were responsible. The man they most hated was the Tokugawa regent, Ii Naosuké, Lord of Hikoné, who had usurped power two months earlier. Just before the subsequent death of the feebleminded Shōgun Tokugawa Iésada, the regent arranged for a twelve-year-old prince of the Kii domain, Tokugawa Iémochi, to succeed him. Under the boy-shōgun, the dictatorial regent ruled with an iron fist.

      Regent Ii was determined that his enemies would not interfere with his plans. He unleashed his infamous Ansei Purge, the extent of which was unprecedented in scope and severity. Nearly one hundred shishi were arrested. A number of them were either executed or perished in prison. But Ii was not the devil incarnate his enemies believed he was, as indicated by a document handed down by the Ii family.

      Fighting [the foreigners] and being defeated, and [as a result] having our country rent asunder, would bring the worst possible disgrace upon our nation. Which would be the graver—refusing [a treaty] and causing ourselves eternal disgrace, or concluding a treaty without imperial sanction, and so sparing our nation from eternal disgrace? At the present time neither our coastal defenses nor our armaments are sufficient. Our only choice for the time being is to concede [to a treaty], as the lesser of two evils. The aim of the Imperial Court is to avoid national disgrace. The Bakufu has been entrusted with the administration of the country. Those who administer the affairs of state must sometimes act with expediency as occasion demands. However, Naosuké is determined to bear upon himself the responsibilities of the grave crime of not obtaining imperial sanction.

      Regent Ii would pay for his “grave crime” the following spring. On the unseasonably snowy morning of March 3, 1860 (the first and only year of the era of Man’en), the regent was assassinated by a band of swordsmen—seventeen from Mito, one from Satsuma—as his palanquin approached Sakurada Gate of Edo Castle. The authority by which the Tokugawa had ruled Japan these past two and a half centuries seemed to evaporate into thin air as the regent’s hot blood melted the freshly fallen snow just outside the castle gate and news of the Sakurada Gate Incident shocked the nation. If the most powerful man in Edo could be cut down by a small band of assassins, there was no limit to the havoc that hundreds, or even thousands, of rōnin could wreak throughout Japan.

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‡ Tokugawa Iémitsu, ruled 1623–1651.

§ 1 koku = 44.8 U.S. gallons.

¶ Tokugawa Yoshimuné, the eighth shōgun, added three additional branch houses to strengthen the foundation of his family’s rule. These were the Hitotsubashi, Tayasu, and Shimizu families. None of these additional three branch families possessed a provincial castle, but rather they lived permanently in Edo.

* New eras were promulgated to mark an extraordinary occasion or occurrence, such as the enthronement of an emperor, a good omen, or a natural disaster. The era name reflects the zeitgeist of the era. (Kojien)

† The Treaty of Peace and Amity is also known as the Treaty of Kanagawa, after the town where it was concluded.

‡ In Edo Bay.

§ Among the most prominent leaders of the revolution were Sakamoto Ryōma and Takéchi Hanpeita, both from Tosa. I have written in detail about these and other Tosa men, as well as about the special relationship between the Yamanouchi and the Tokugawa, in Ryoma—Life of a Renaissance Samurai and in Samurai Tales.

¶ Kojien, the standard Japanese dictionary, defines shishi as (1) “a person of high purpose;” (2) “a person of high purpose who risks his own life for the nation or society.” Many of the shishi in Kyōto were rōnin. Most of the shishi during the final years of Tokugawa rule hailed from the Chōshū, Tosa, Satsuma, and Higo clans. But the term was by no means limited to Imperial Loyalists. Numerous supporters of the Tokugawa, including samurai of Mito, Fukui, Aizu, and the Shinsengumi, also called themselves shishi. Nor was the title limited to samurai; it was also claimed by peasants, merchants, and clerics who risked their lives on both sides of the revolution.

       Loyal and Patriotic Corps

      The situation in the Imperial Capital continued to deteriorate. Unruly rōnin flocked to Kyōto. Most were Imperial Loyalists with a vendetta against the Bakufu. All were men of high purpose. They wore two lethal swords at their left hip. They were raring to use their swords to expel the barbarians and punish the shōgun’s government for allowing them entrance. In the spring of 1863, as blood flowed and chaos reigned in the Imperial Capital, the shōgun was compelled to visit there—to report to the emperor his promise to expel the barbarians. The Bakufu instituted a new post—the protector of Kyōto. It was the official function of the protector of Kyōto to safeguard the Imperial Capital in preparation for the shōgun’s visit; but it was his true purpose to crush the enemies of the Tokugawa. Under the slogan “Loyalty and Patriotism,” the Bakufu enlisted rōnin in the east to subdue rōnin in the west. In vain, the government provided each man of the “loyal and patriotic” corps with a pittance of gold—an ill-conceived attempt to gain their loyalty. When the corpsmen proved no less possessed of anti-Tokugawa fervor than those they were commissioned to subdue, the protector of Kyōto and his bewildered allies in Edo balked.

Shōgun Tokugawa Iémochi could not expel the foreigners—his regime, and indeed Japan as a whole, lacked the military means to do so. The bitter truth of Japan’s weakness vis-à-vis foreign nations had long been expressed by no less an authority on Western military power