regime at Kamakura.* After the arrival of the foreigners in 1853, the martial arts again flourished in Tama.
Tama was an expansive region. The Tokugawa magistrates in charge of policing Tama did not have the resources to patrol the entire area, or to protect it against the marauding swordsmen. Village leaders were appointed by the magistrates to police their respective villages. The peasants working under the village leaders were required to study martial arts—partly to protect themselves against the marauders. Some of the wealthy peasants built training halls at their homes and hired local fencing masters to instruct them. Among these wealthy peasants was Katsugorō’s father, Miyagawa Hisajirō.
Katsugorō’s mother died while he was a young boy. His father was an avid reader of history. On rainy days Katsugorō’s father would call his three sons to the family hearth, where he would read to them chronicles of heroic deeds. From an early age the future Shinsengumi commander was taught an appreciation of literature and martial arts and participated in the training sessions at his family’s home dojō. When Katsugorō was fourteen, his father hired a local fencing instructor to teach his three sons. The instructor’s name was Kondō Shūsuké. He was the master of the Shieikan, a minor fencing school in Edo. Master Shūsuké taught the Tennen Rishin style. Katsugorō proved himself naturally inclined toward rigorous kenjutsu training. In the following year he was awarded mokuroku, the second of five ranks in the Tennen Rishin style.† Master Shūsuké was impressed with the boy’s ferocity, both on and off the practice floor. One night when their father was away on business, Katsugorō and his two brothers were awoken by the sound of robbers breaking into their house. Far from being frightened, the brothers saw this as a perfect chance to test the fencing techniques they had studied. The robbers were armed with knives. The brothers pursued them with drawn swords. The robbers attempted to flee with stolen property in their arms. Katsugorō yelled the word “stop!” with an ear-piercing guttural wail such as he had learned from his master. The robbers threw down their booty and fled for their lives.
Kondō Shūsuké was getting along in years. Perhaps it was Katsugorō’s innate courage that now convinced the master to petition Miyagawa Hisajirō for permission to adopt his fifteen-year-old son as his heir. Permission was presently granted, and soon it was determined that Katsugorō would become the fourth generational head of the Tennen Rishin style. The peasant’s son now became a samurai. He left his native village to live in Edo at the home of his fencing master, where he continued to devote himself to the study of kenjutsu.
Kondō Isami’s black training robe (original; courtesy of Masataka Kojima)
Kondō was married in his twenty-sixth year. Otsuné was three years younger than he was. Unlike her husband, she had been born into the warrior class. Her father was a retainer of the Shimizu family, a Tokugawa Branch House. Otsuné was homely and apparently had a harelip. But she was wellborn, well-bred, well-educated, and, perhaps most important, endowed with measures of propriety and pluck more prevalent in the daughter of a samurai than in a woman of the common classes. The sword master’s heir had encountered many other prospective brides, each more physically attractive than Otsuné. When asked why he had chosen Otsuné for his wife, he is said to have replied, “I had interviews with beautiful women. They were conceited about their good looks. But Otsuné was much more humble in her manner and very polite.” Perhaps this is indicative of a certain humanity in the future Shinsengumi commander, and certainly it had something to do with his immovable determination to adhere to the stoic mores of his adopted social class. They were married at the end of March 1860, as the capital reeled from the shock of Regent Ii Naosuké’s assassination. Soon after their marriage, Otsuné embroidered the likeness of a skull on the back of Kondō’s training robe—a token of her appreciation for her warrior-husband’s resolve to die.
In the following year the sword master’s heir was awarded shinan menkyo, the highest rank in the Tennen Rishin style. Kondō Shūsuké now retired, and his adopted son became the fourth master of that style. The Shieikan flourished under the young master. The names on the student roster exceeded three hundred, mostly men of peasant households in Tama. The young master traveled around the region to teach at local training halls. He was a large, muscular man. His feet were so big that the maid employed at the home of a friend was “stunned by the unusually large size of his wooden clogs,” which he removed before entering the house. So large was his mouth that he could fit his entire fist inside—an antic that drew hysterical laughter at drinking bouts during the bloody and tumultuous years he ruled the dangerous streets of the Imperial Capital. It was also around his twenty-seventh year that the peasant-turned-swordmaster changed his name to Kondō Isami‡—an appellation that would arouse feelings of derision, fear, and hate among his enemies; pride and love among the good people of his native Tama; gratitude and hope among the embattled powers that were in Edo; and awed respect among them all.
Kondō practiced the Tennen Rishin style for more than fourteen years. When the opportunity was presented him at age twenty-nine to put his sword to practical use, it was with his great courage, a burning desire to “vent [his] long-held indignation” toward the foreign intruders, and a determination to make a name for himself as a samurai in the service of the shōgun that he closed the doors of the Shieikan and, with seven of his top swordsmen, enlisted in the Rōshi Corps.
The Shinsengumi originally had three commanders. Ranking beside Kondō and Serizawa was a close ally of the latter named Shinmi Nishiki. But Shinmi was a nominal rather than actual commander. Exceedingly more important to this historical narrative, and to the history of Japan, was Hijikata Toshizō, one of two vice commanders of the Shinsengumi, whose warrior’s nature earned him the epithet “Demon Commander.” Hijikata was Kondō’s closest friend and confidant. Like Kondō, he was also the youngest son of a wealthy Tama peasant. He was a handsome man just over five feet seven inches tall.§ He had a light complexion and almost classical features, which made him stand out among his countrymen. His photograph, taken after the fall of the Bakufu, at the end of 1868, shows Vice Commander of the Army Hijikata Toshizō seated on a wooden chair in Western-style clothing with knee-high military boots and a sword at his left side. The cropped black hair, no longer in a topknot, is combed straight back. Most striking are the eyes, betraying an unyielding yet calm resolve to die—almost a longing for death—which he would bring with him to his last battle.
Hijikata was one year younger than Kondō. Having lost both parents by the time he was five years old, Hijikata was raised by his elder brother and sister-in-law at his family’s home in Ishida Village, beneath the shadow of the ancient and solemn Takahata Fudō Temple. At eleven he was briefly apprenticed at the giant mercantile enterprise Matsuzaka’ya in Edo. Upon returning to his native countryside, the boy divided his time between his family’s home and the nearby residence of his elder sister and her husband at Hino, a post town along the Kōshū-kaidō. When Hijikata was sixteen, he planted arrow bamboo behind his house and vowed to himself, as preposterously as prophetically, “to become a samurai.” Arrow bamboo consists of short, straight shafts no thicker than a person’s finger—ideal for making arrows. Planting arrow bamboo was considered an act of discretion—preparation for war becoming of a samurai. Similarly samurai-like were the manly arts of calligraphy and poetry (both Chinese and Japanese), which Hijikata pursued with a passion. He was particularly fond of haiku. Under the pen name Hōgyoku, he left behind in Hino a collection of haiku before setting out for Kyōto.
Hijikata’s brother-in-law, Satō Hikogorō, earned menkyo rank under Kondō Shūsuké, entitling him to teach the Tennen Rishin style. Before that, Satō had inherited from his father an expansive and gated country estate and a lofty position as official leader of Hino Village. Although he belonged to the
