had diminished their former patriotic ideals. According to most sources, Yamanami’s vexation was exacerbated sometime in early 1865, when Kondō and Hijikata, unhappy with their cramped headquarters at Mibu, decided to move to a more spacious location at Nishihonganji Temple in the southwest of the city. The temple priests were perplexed over the decision. Their attempts to rebuff the Shinsengumi were ignored by Kondō and Hijikata. Yamanami objected to what he considered coercion of Buddhist priests. “Certainly there are many other suitable places,” he admonished Kondō, and suggested that his commander reconsider. But his commander would not reconsider, and Yamanami resolved to pay the ultimate price. He composed a farewell letter explaining the reasons he could no longer, in good conscience, risk his life under Kondō ’s command. Then he defected.†
Yamanami fled to the town of Ōtsu, about seven miles east of Kyōto on Lake Biwa. Although sources differ in the details of subsequent events, according to both Nagakura and Shimosawa, Kondō sent Okita to retrieve Yamanami. This was no easy task. For all of Okita’s skill with a sword, Yamanami himself was an expert in the Hokushin Ittō style. He was also proficient in jūjutsu. That Okita apprehended him without a struggle seems to indicate that Yamanami was resigned to his fate. Upon his return to Mibu, he was summoned to an assembly of Shinsengumi leaders in the Maekawa house.
“Desertion,” Kondō said, breaking an austere silence, “is prohibited by Shinsengumi regulations.” Kondō spoke solemnly as he ordered Yamanami to commit seppuku—a propensity to kill. Yamanami calmly expressed his appreciation and happiness at being called upon to perform this most honorable task for a samurai. He then excused himself momentarily. When he returned to the room he had changed into formal attire. He placed a mat over the clean tatami floor so as not to soil it with his blood. He sat on the mat, assumed the formal position, and placed his short sword in front of himself. He thanked all present for their long-lasting fellowship. He exchanged ceremonious farewell cups of water with them and courteously delivered his farewell speech. He asked Okita Sōji to serve as his second, instructing the genius swordsman not to “lower your sword until I give the word.” Then he gently took up his short sword and plunged it into his lower abdomen. After slicing the blade across in one straight line, he fell forward with a final thrust of energy, earning, according to Nagakura, “Kondō’s praise for the splendidness” by which he performed this ultimate task.
The number of rank and filers who suffered a similar fate is unknown. The officers were no exception. Of the twenty-two most noted officers, only three survived those bloody times. At least six were assassinated, three committed seppuku, and two were executed. In 1876, eight years after the death of Kondō Isami and the final collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu, in the Itabashi district of Tōkyō—the new Eastern Capital—at a spot on the earth just a stone’s throw from the execution grounds where Kondō had been beheaded, Nagakura erected a stone monument for the repose of the souls of his comrades who did not survive the revolution. Their names are engraved on the stone. Thirty-nine are listed as having died in battle, and seventy-one having met their end by disease, accident, seppuku, or execution.
The most severe treatment fell upon traitors and spies. Immediately following the coup in August, all Chōshū men and their rōnin allies were officially banned from the Imperial Capital. Some of them, however, managed to remain in the city for reconnaissance purposes, disguised as merchants or beggars. These outlaws were hunted by men of the Tokugawa camp, including Aizu and the Shinsengumi.
“The Shinsengumi became the object of hatred among shishi from Chōshū,” Nagakura recalled. “They concluded that as long as Kondō and his men dominated the Kyōto scene, it would be difficult for them to effect [another] uprising. And so Katsura Kogorō‡ chose four of his comrades ... as assassins” to infiltrate the Shinsengumi. On August 25, one week after the coup, several Chōshū men suddenly showed up at Mibu headquarters. They claimed to have left the service of their han due to a falling-out with their clansmen. They requested permission to join the Shinsengumi. Kondō accepted them into the corps, intending to use them as spies to “find and kill the malcontents from Chōshū hiding in Kyōto.” He ordered his new recruits to stay at the Maekawa residence, and gave them 100 ryō to pay for uniforms and other expenses. Having concluded his meeting with the four Chōshū 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,
