THE STORY OF TOSHIZO HIJIKATA - CHAPTER FIVE: WE LIVE A DYING DREAM (IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN)
It’s not the Boshin War that triggered the downfall of the Shinsengumi, however. They did it themselves.
After their success with the Ikedaya Inn affair, they became powerful. And power corrupts – that’s one of the lamest, saddest, most predictable human truths.
At first, Kyoto honestly celebrated them as heroes. Yet soon – miserably soon – they started behaving as if the city and its people owed them veneration. They were its saviors, after all. Did them useless samurai stop the fire, perhaps? No, the Shinsengumi did – of course they had the goddamn right to enjoy some privilege! So better show some fucking gratitude, and do it with a smile.
Quickly, badmouthing the group, frowning upon a Shinsengumi member, refusing to provide free services, or simply having the wrong kind of face were good enough reasons for a person to get arrested, accused of supporting the Sonno Joi, tormented and even executed – all in the name of protecting the Shogun’s order. The people of the imperial city didn’t like this one bit, obviously. By 1865, Kyoto found itself locked in an ugly vicious circle: the more the Shinsengumi oppressed the city, the more its people started thinking that those Sonno Joi guys might have a point, and the stronger the Sonno Joi movement grew, the more the Shinsengumi oppressed the city. It was a nauseating merry-go-round.
Strange, historians say that fame didn’t really get to Toshizo Hijikata’s head, even though he was the “face” of the Shinsengumi and did enjoy more than a few perks here and there. He mostly stood with both feet on the ground, genuinely focused on weeding out the Satsuma-Choshu. It was Isami Kondo, the former master of Shieikan and the group’s benevolent leader, who lost his marbles.
Becoming obsessed with grandeur and self-importance, Isami Kondo concluded that their headquarters in Mibu were too “provincial” and “peasant-like”. So he set his eyes out on a much more appropriate accommodation, one that would rival the estates of even the most powerful Kyoto lords: the Nishi Hongan Temple, a glorious Buddhist monastery from the 16th century, one of the most beautiful buildings in the imperial city.
He couldn’t kick the monks in the street just like that, obviously. Hence, he and Toshizo came up with a most devilish plan: the Shinsengumi would simply move into the temple – which, being the saviors of Kyoto, they totally had the right to do – and go on with their daily business. Too bad that “daily business” did not involve only practicing swordsmanship, but also torturing prisoners and making the group members who had violated the Code commit seppuku in the front yard. It didn’t take long before the monks, horrified by all the violence, packed their bags and left on their own, gifting the Shinsengumi with the headquarters of their dreams.
That moment when our ragtag group of wannabe samurai became the most powerful force in Kyoto, living cozily in the Nishi Hongan Temple and basking in centuries old masterworks of Japanese art once made for the first Shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa himself – that was the dark pinnacle of the Shinsengumi. From that point on, it’s only spiraling downwards.
The first major Shinsengumi member died full three years before the Boshin War would officially begin.
In 1865, the kind-hearted Keisuke Yamanami deserted from the group, and fled from Kyoto. This wasn’t only a violation of the Code, but also a sort of embarrassment – Yamanami was as highly ranked as Toshizo Hijikata himself, and to have such an eminent member desert was more than awkward. So Toshizo, being the group’s enforcer, went on a chase, taking Souji Okita with him, as the boy was a good friend of Yamanami’s ever since their Shieikan days. It didn’t take long before they found him in the nearby city of Otsu, on the shores of Lake Biwa – if Yamanami wanted to hide, he didn’t do a good job.
In some novels that glamorize the tale of the Shinsengumi, it is written that Yamanami escaped because of a woman – a former geisha, to boot. They eloped together in pursuit of a happy ending, which was as thoughtless and selfish as it was romantic. But historians disagree – no contemporary chroniclers recorded any geisha in Yamanami’s life. They claim that what he did was a carefully planned suicide, which he staged with one purpose in mind – to teach his former comrades a lesson.
See, Yamanami was a deeply religious man, and he just couldn’t let slide what the Shinsengumi did to the monks of the Nishi Hongan Temple. He believed that the group strayed from its path of patriotism, samurai aspirations and loyalty to the Shogun. They became the exact sort of attention-seeking power-grabbing murderers that those who despised them thought they were, Yamanami said to Toshizo and Souji Okita. They betrayed their dream. He tried warning Isami Kondo about it, but the man wouldn’t listen. And now if he had to die to prove his point, so be it.
Toshizo was the witness of Yamanami’s seppuku, while Souji Okita served as the kaishakunin – the friend who delivers the final blow to the samurai by cutting off his head the moment he stabs his stomach. The men returned to Kyoto blood-splattered, traumatized, and deeply aware that nothing would be the same again.
Toshizo Hijikata never spoke about Yamanami’s death. Souji Okita never recovered from it.
Indeed, everything changed afterwards. Slowly but steadily, the Shinsengumi started falling apart. The new recruits, who came in hordes after the Ikedaya Inn affair, couldn’t care less about the samurai ideals – they wanted to be part of the group because, well, it was profitable to be a Shinsengumi. You were able to do lots of nasty shit and get away with it, as long as you didn’t break the Code. The leaders pretended that everything was just fine, of course. Isami Kondo’s head was in the clouds, all lost in pomposity. Souji Okita was crumbling from the illness he was no longer able to hide. Hajime Saito was away on spy business more often than he was around. Todo, Harada and Nagakura did their best to stick together in a group where the feeling of camaraderie paled by the day. As for Toshizo, he tried a bit too hard to keep himself busy with chasing the Sonno Joi supporters. And so, years went by.
Heisuke Todo, the alleged son of the Lord of Tsu, left the Shinsengumi in 1867 with a group of likeminded malcontents whose actual political leanings were more pro-imperial that they were first willing to admit. Isami Kondo allowed them to leave, but then changed his mind and asked for their heads. The group was slaughtered in a rarely ugly incident that involved being invited to a friendly get-together with old comrades and given atrocious amounts of overly strong sake, because drunk people were easier to kill. Some historians say that Nagakura and Harada wanted to arrange for Todo to escape – the boy was, after all, a close friend once. Some even say they had Kondo’s approval to do so. But a new Shinsengumi member, a rookie who never knew Heisuke Todo or heard him talk about his rich, noble father, killed him on the spot. Todo was 23 years old.
In the same year that Heisuke Todo was murdered by the Shinsengumi, the Emperor Komei died. Komei spent most of his life playing the symbolic role of the living god, but in his late years, his active interest in the Sonno Joi movement and attempts at becoming a political player opened a can of worms. His heir - the teenaged Emperor Meiji – continued with the same tune even more loudly, as eager as only a 15-year-old desperate to impress can be. On the opposite side of the field, a year earlier, the position of the Shogun went to Yoshinobu Tokugawa, a distant relative from the third branch of the family and an unlikely candidate to ever get the title. It seemed that the screwed up politics of the Bakumatsu were above his head, as Yoshinobu soon struggled to keep things under control with dissatisfied samurai clans, politicians who plotted his demise, an overly ambitious boy Emperor, and those damn foreigners who still didn’t want to leave.
Outside of the Shinsengumi-controlled Kyoto, the late 1860s were rife with mini-rebellions mostly orchestrated by the Choshu, which were popping up all over Japan and gave a royal headache to poor Yoshinobu. A couple of conflicts almost turned the tables - the only reason that the Alliance kept losing was that the Shogun had foreign military power to back him up when push came to shove. Yoshinobu hit it off with the French – a new force in East Asia, who were undergoing a colonialist renaissance under Napoleon the Third, happily spreading their influence wherever they could. But in spite of foreign help – or maybe because of it – the Satsuma-Choshu Alliance grew stronger with more clans joining them, while the Shogunate slowly collapsed as more and more local lords started ignoring Yoshinobu’s orders (with excuses that honestly sounded like “my dog ate your letter”, only formulated in that overly polite, typically Japanese manner). The stage was set for the revolution to begin.
The year 1867 ended with a dramatic episode in which Yoshinobu abdicated, but changed his mind after being yelled at by other members of the Tokugawa family that one cannot just quit being the motherfucking Shogun and walk away. Still, the consequence of his escapade was that the Shinsengumi had to formally withdraw from Kyoto, given that the Shogunate gave up on policing the city. They left grudgingly but in peace, and set camp near the city, fully trusting that the Shogun knew what he was doing. Yet it was pretty tough being in poor Yoshinobu’s too-tight shoes. Deciding that he ain't no quitter and being bullied into bearing his teeth, he declared a full-on war on the Alliance – and that was, ladies and gents, how the Boshin War began.
In January 1868, the Shogunate forces began their march from Edo to Kyoto. The goal was to officially seize the imperial city, “save” the Emperor Meiji from the poisonous influences of the Satsuma-Choshu, kill anyone who tried to resist, and finally put a full stop to the revolutionary claptrap. With the Shinsengumi stationed near Kyoto to support his own troops and the French having his back, Yoshinobu was looking forward to a short and efficient battle that would at last reinstate the Shogunate rule.
But then.
Remember when I said that, in reality, the Boshin War was anything but the modernists against the traditionalists, the gunmen against the samurai?
Here’s the irony. After wasting too much money, manpower and years playing games with the Shogunate, the Satsuma-Choshu Alliance did a thing. In late 1867, the same guys who began as the nationalistic side in the conflict, as conservative zealots whose motto was “expel the barbarians”, got in touch with – wait for it – the American army. The Americans didn’t like it one bit that the bloody French gained so much power in a country that, essentially, belonged to them. So of course they were happy to provide all the canons, rifles, machinery, modern uniforms and military strategists the Alliance could wish for, if only young Emperor Meiji would be so kind as to allow them to keep their treaties and privileges once he seized the power for himself.
On January 27th 1868, the Shogunate forces – with the Shinsengumi among them – clashed with the rebels of Satsuma, Choshu and Tosa clans near Fushimi, a suburb of Kyoto. It was supposed to be easy. Yoshinobu had more men – his army outnumbered the Alliance 3 to 1. But his troops were wearing the traditional samurai equipment: armors and swords and pikes, with a few rifles here and there. Even his French-trained “elite” units were given outdated second-hand gear, some of it dating as far back as from Napoleon’s conquests. The Alliance, on the other hand, used state-of-the art American weaponry – including one Gatling gun whose sound tore open the skies, petrified the horses, and made the Shogunate infantry drop their pikes and run for their lives.
What followed was a bloodbath.
To put it mildly, the Shogunate army was pummeled into the ground, and then some. The streets were covered with dead bodies ripped apart by American bullets - as if the lesson that Commodore Perry had wanted to teach the Shogun came fifteen years later, delivered by Japanese hands. It was a painful, humiliating defeat that tore the Shogunate pride to shreds. And even though the Battle of Toba-Fushimi was only the first clash in the Boshin War, it was the dying breath of Edo Japan.
Many Shinsengumi lost their lives at Toba-Fushimi. Many more were wounded – cut off limbs, broken bones, spilt entrails – which made them die for days, or forced them to retire from the war. Toshizo Hijikata made it out in one piece, of course. He was deeply horrified by the experience. Somewhat conflicted but ever the pragmatist, knowing very well it was the only option left albeit he didn’t like it at all, Toshizo came to one conclusion – if the Shogunate were to survive, it urgently had to adopt the Western way of life.
So he cut off his waist-long hair and ditched his stylish kimonos, replacing them with a suit of black velvet and burgundy silk made in Paris. And then he started learning how to shoot with a rifle.
~to be continued~
Next chapter: The Lost
THE STORY OF TOSHIZO HIJIKATA – CHAPTER SIX: The Lost