upon their enemies. Terror reigned. Assassination was a nightly occurrence. The assassins skewered the heads of their victims onto bamboo stakes. They stuck the stakes into the soft mud along the riverbank. The spectacle by dawn was ghastly.
Shinsengumi Banner
(replica; courtesy of Hijikata Toshizō Museum)
The authorities were determined to rein in the chaos and terror. A band of swordsmen was formed. They were given the name Shinsengumi—Newly Selected Corps—and commissioned to restore law and order to the Imperial Capital. At once reviled and revered, they were known alternately as rōnin hunters, wolves, murderers, thugs, band of assassins, and eventually the most dreaded security force in Japanese history. Their official mission was to protect the shōgun; but their assigned purpose was single and clear—to eliminate the rōnin who would overthrow the shōgun’s government. Endowed with an official sanction and unsurpassed propensity to kill, the men of the Shinsengumi swaggered through the ancient city streets. Under their trademark banner of “sincerity,” their presence and even their very name evoked terror among the terrorists, as an entire nation reeled around them.
Historical Background
The fall of the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1868 was one of the great events in Asian and, indeed, world history. The creation of the shogunate over two and a half centuries earlier was the pivotal event in the history of Japan. In 1600 Tokugawa Iéyasu, head of the House of Tokugawa, defeated his enemies in the decisive battle at Sekigahara, the historical and geographical center of Japan. Iéyasu emerged from Sekigahara as the mightiest feudal lord in the empire. In 1603 he was conferred by the emperor with the title sei’i’taishōgun—commander in chief of the expeditionary forces against the barbarians, or simply, shōgun. The new shōgun established his military government in the east, at Edo (modern-day Tōkyō). He and his descendants ruled from Edo Castle, which by the time of the third shōgun of the Tokugawa dynasty‡ was the largest fortress in Japan. The emperor, meanwhile, remained a powerless figurehead at his palace in Kyōto, the ancient Imperial Capital in the west.
During the Tokugawa Period (1603–1868), Japan was comprised of hundreds of feudal domains. These domains were called han. Their number fluctuated slightly, but by the end of the Tokugawa Period there were approximately 260 han. Each han was ruled by a feudal lord, or daimyō. The samurai retainers of each daimyō administered the government of their lord’s han. In turn, the samurai received annual stipends which were calculated in koku—bushels of rice.§ The rice was produced by the peasants, who ranked just below the samurai in the social hierarchy. Beneath the peasants were the artisans and merchants.
The Tokugawa regime, known as the Tokugawa Bakufu, Edo Bakufu, or simply Bakufu, subjugated the han throughout Japan. Shōgun Tokugawa Iéyasu bequeathed upon his favorite sons the great domains of Owari, Kii, and Mito. These became the Three Branch Houses of the Tokugawa. The heads of the Three Branch Houses were the highest-ranking feudal lords under the shōgun. By Iéyasu’s provisions, in the event that a shōgun failed to produce an heir, his successor was to be chosen from among the branch houses.¶ Following in the hierarchy were the twenty Related Houses, descended from Iéyasu’s younger sons. Below them were the hereditary lords, whose descendants had aided Iéyasu at Sekigahara. The hereditary lords were direct retainers of the Tokugawa and, generally speaking, occupied the most important governmental posts, including those of regent and senior councilor. During the final years of Tokugawa rule, there were 145 hereditary lords. The progeny of those who either had been defeated by Iéyasu or had not sided with him were the so-called outside lords, of whom there were ninety-eight at the end of the Tokugawa Period. The Yamanouchi of Tosa, the Shimazu of Satsuma, and the Mōri of Chōshū were among the most powerful families of outside lords. From these three han would emerge the leaders in the revolution to overthrow the Bakufu and restore the emperor to his ancient seat of power. This revolution was the Meiji Restoration.
In 1635 the Bakufu initiated the system of alternate attendance, by which all daimyō were required to maintain official residences at Edo and live in them in alternate years. Through this system the Bakufu ensured that half of the feudal lords would always be present in Edo, while the other half were in their respective domains. The vast expense of maintaining Edo residences and traveling back and forth to the shōgun’s capital necessarily reduced the amount of money left the feudal lords for military expenditures. Further safeguarding against insurrection in the provinces was the requirement that each daimyō keep his wife and heir at his Edo residence as virtual hostages during his absence from the capital.
The Tokugawa ruled more or less peacefully for the next two and a half centuries. To maintain this peace, the Bakufu had strictly enforced a policy of national isolation since 1635. But the end of this halcyon era approached as the social, political, and economic structures of the outside world underwent major changes. The British colonies in North America declared independence in 1776. The remnants of feudalism in Europe were obliterated by the French Revolution in 1789 and the ensuing Napoleonic Wars. The nineteenth century heralded the age of European and North American capitalism and, with it, rapid advances in science, industry, and technology. The development of the steamship in the early part of the nineteenth century served the expansionist purposes of Western nations. Colonization of Asian countries by European powers surged. In 1818 Great Britain subjugated much of India. Through the Treaty of Nanking, which ended the first Opium War in 1842, the British acquired Hong Kong.
The foreign menace reached Japan on June 3 of the sixth year of the era named Ka’ei—July 8, 1853, on the Gregorian calendar.* It was on that day that Commodore Matthew Perry of the U.S. Navy led a squadron of heavily armed warships into Edo Bay, off the shōgun’s capital, eventually forcing an end to Japanese isolation and inciting fifteen years of bloody turmoil across the island nation. Perry carried a letter from President Millard Fillmore demanding a treaty between the United States and Japan. After months of stormy and unprecedented debate among samurai and daimyō both within and outside the Tokugawa camp, and even including members of the general populace, the authorities eventually yielded to Perry’s gunboat diplomacy. In March 1854, the first year of the era of Ansei, Japan relinquished its policy of isolationism and signed the so-called Treaty of Peace and Amity with the Americans.† Similar treaties with England, Holland, France, and Russia followed. Two ports were opened—one at Shimoda, not far from Edo; the other at Hakodaté, on the far-northern island of Ezo.
Samurai throughout Japan were outraged over the humiliation they suffered at the hands of the foreigners. The situation was tersely explained by one who rose above this outrage in order to deal with the unprecedented and pressing dangers facing Japan. “Since the time that the American warships arrived at Uraga‡ in 1853, public opinion became divided between the advocates of war and peace, so that a decision could not be made either way,” Katsu Kaishū wrote four decades later, in a brief chronicle of the origin and downfall of the Tokugawa Bakufu. Kaishū was an expert swordsman who never drew his sword on an adversary. He was a philosopher-statesman, founder of the Japanese navy, and, during those dangerous times, probably the most valuable personage in the entire Edo regime. “At that time the Bakufu decided to open the country, and gradually did so. There were many people, including feudal lords, who resented this. They said that the Bakufu was forced by the barbarians to open the country because of its cowardice and weakness, and that this was why the Bakufu submitted to this humiliation. They no longer believed in the Bakufu. There was heated argument everywhere. People were killing foreigners, and
