The Peasant as Feudal Lord
Of Defeat, Disgrace, and Apotheosis
Epilogue: Hijikata’s Last Fight
Table of Era Names and Their Corresponding Years in Western Chronology
List of Photographs
Page 3: Miniature Shinsengumi Banner (original; courtesy of Hijikata Toshizō Museum)
Page 20: Shinsengumi Commander Kondō Isami (Courtesy of the descendants of Satō Hikogorō and Hino-shi Furusato Hakubutsukan Museum)
Page 21: Shinsengumi Vice Commander Hijikata Toshizō (Courtesy of the descendants of Satō Hikogorō and Hino-shi Furusato Hakubutsukan Museum)
Page 23: Shinsengumi Banner (replica; courtesy of Hijikata Toshizō Museum)
Page 46: Kondō Isami’s black training robe (original; courtesy of Masataka Kojima)
Japan
Edo and Vicinity
Kyōto
Ezo
Note on Japanese Pronunciation
The pronunciation of vowels and diphthongs are approximated as follows:
| a | as in | car |
| e | as in | pen |
| i | as in | police |
| o | as in | low |
| u | as in | sue |
| ai | as in | sky |
| ei | as in | bay |
| au | as in | now |
ii There is no English approximation of this sound. There is a slight pause between the first i and the second i.
An e following a consonant is not a hard sound but rather a soft one. This is indicated by an accent mark (é). For example, saké is pronounced “sa-kay,” and Ikéda’ya as “ee-kay-da-ya.” An e following a vowel is also indicated by an accent mark (é) and pronounced similarly. For example, the place name Uéno is pronounced “oo-ay-no,” and Iéyasu as “ee-ay-ya-su.” The long vowel sounds (in which u or o are extended) are indicated by ū and ō, respectively, as in Kaishū and Kondō. There are no English approximations of these sounds. They are included to distinguish between the short u and o, as in Shinsengumi and Edo.
There are no English approximations for the following sounds. They consist of only one syllable.
ryo
myo
hyo
kyo
ryu
kyu
tsu
There are no English approximations for double consonants, including kk (Nikkō), ss (Gesshin’in [temple]), tt (Hokushin Ittōstyle [of fencing]), and nn (Tennen Rishin style [of fencing]). They are distinguished from single consonants by a slight fricative sound.
Author’s Note
For the sake of authenticity I have placed Japanese family names before given names (except for the names of twentieth-century writers quoted in the text) and have used the Chinese calendar rather than the Gregorian one to preserve the actual feeling of mid-nineteenth-century Japan. For clarity’s sake, Japanese dates and era names are generally accompanied by the corresponding years in the Western calendar. For easy reference, I have included a short Table of Era Names and Their Corresponding Years in Western Chronology after the appendixes. I have romanized Japanese terms when I felt that translation would be syntactically awkward or semantically inaccurate. These romanized terms, other than names, are italicized the first time they appear, except for words such as samurai and geisha, which are included in the lexicon of modern American English. I have translated terms, including proper nouns, that I thought would lend themselves favorably to English. I have not necessarily adhered to translations of terms that have been used by other writers. I have not pluralized Japanese terms, but a plural or singular meaning should be clear from the context in which a term is used. For example, a samurai is singular, whereas many samurai is plural.
I have written a brief Historical Background, preceding the first chapter (“Loyal and Patriotic Corps”), to give readers a basic foundation by which to better comprehend this intricate history. Unlike in my previous books, I have included a bibliography and source notes, although most of my sources are in the Japanese language. All English renderings of historical Japanese documents— including
