THE STORY OF TOSHIZO HIJIKATA – CHAPTER SIX: THE LOST
Only a few months before the Battle of Toba-Fushimi, in the winter of 1867, the Shogun Yoshinobu Tokugawa did a very special thing for the Shinsengumi: he gave every single major member of the group the title of hatamoto. A hatamoto was a personal retainer of the Shogun – it was the highest rank and the greatest honor that could be bestowed upon a samurai in Edo Japan. You couldn’t do better than that. It was the first time that such a title was given to a group of former farmers, merchants, workers, and craftsmen – it didn’t only make them equal to the samurai, it turned them into something akin to aristocracy. It was a dream come true – and more than they had ever dared to dream.
Too bad that, in the last years of the Bakumatsu as the world was falling down, the Shogun’s decrees no longer carried the same weight. The title of hatamoto didn’t mean anything anymore. It was nothing but a hollow word, a fancy piece of paper. A lie.
Toshizo Hijikata was painfully aware of that. After the Toba-Fushimi disaster, he did his best to reorganize the Shinsengumi – or what was left of them – and put them back on the military map. He engaged French trainers, arranged the purchase of firearms, and ordered the group members to start wearing western clothes – those sky blue uniforms may have looked pretty, but they were damn impractical for guns and rifles, as the loose sleeves were getting tangled everywhere. He formed an unexpectedly close bond with Jules Brunet, a French military advisor in Tokugawa service who had participated in the Battle of Toba-Fushimi – an odd friendship that would last until the bitter end. Brunet told him a lot about European warfare and tactics, and Toshizo did his best to pick it up. Yet after Toba-Fushimi, the Shinsengumi were decimated. New recruits were scarce – especially after the group lost their hold of Kyoto, and it became blatantly obvious that the Shogunate was the losing side in this quagmire. At some point, the group was so desperate as to offer unlimited sake as an incentive for signing up – but as you can imagine, people who joined a military faction because they were promised free booze didn’t make the best candidates for turning into disciplined, modern, Napoleon-style troops.
Toshizo Hijikata’s sad attempts to reboot the Shinsengumi after hitting rock bottom reflect Yoshinobu’s own efforts to urgently remodel the Shogunate army. Indeed, all that remained of Shogunate’s money was promptly invested into warships, canons and uniforms, all provided by the French. But, as the saying goes, Yoshinobu was a day late and a dollar short – just because the Satsuma-Choshu Alliance was the first to fully adopt the Western weaponry, they had the upper hand, and soon enough they were winning on all fronts, no matter how hard the Shogunate tried. And right there, that’s the paradox of the Boshin War – in the end, there was no “samurai” side, only two factions in a civil war backed by two different foreign governments fighting for power.
When the Shinsengumi quit Kyoto, Toshizo tried to keep the group afloat, but their Commander Isami Kondo – whose pomposity was notorious even before things went to seven hells – wasn’t helping. The poor man flipped out completely. It’s not only that he refused Western clothing and frowned upon firearms. It’s that, unlike Toshizo, he took the title of hatamoto very, very seriously. Before long, he went around their understaffed, misery-stricken camp acting like a true samurai lord, and treating other group members – many of whom were his comrades from the Shieikan – as mere underlings. Kondo took it too far – when he asked his former brothers-in-arms to address him with honorifics reserved for nobility, Shinpachi Nagakura, who’d always been known for having a temper, couldn’t put up with it any longer. After writing a long and detailed petition which could be summarized as “101 Things I Hate about Isami Kondo” (Nagakura had a remarkable talent for words – a detail that would come up as important in the later years), he theatrically quit the group, and took Sanosuke Harada with him. This time, no one tried to stop them. No one mentioned the Code, no one asked for their heads. They just let them walk away.
For a while, there were rumors that Sanosuke Harada – the man with the scar across his belly – left Japan for good and moved to China where he became the leader of a group of masked bandits and lived happily ever after, raiding merchant caravans all over Manchuria. While amusing, this story is sadly unfounded. History says that soon after quitting the Shinsengumi, Harada got reunited with his wife and child, and settled for a peaceful life in Edo. But peace was a fleeting matter during the Boshin War. The family bliss lasted but only a few months – the Alliance forces, now officially the army of Emperor Meiji, went straight for Edo with the aim to break the center of Tokugawa power. Ending up trapped in Edo under siege, Sanosuke Harada had no choice but to take up arms again, and go defend the city on behalf of the Shogun. He got shot in the Battle of Ueno, and died two days later after his wounds got infected. He was 29.
As for Shinpachi Nagakura, a few months after quitting, the man disappeared off the face off the earth.
Yoshinobu Tokugawa, the last Shogun, officially threw the towel on April 11th 1868, surrendering the city of Edo along with all reins of power to young Emperor Meiji. Yoshinobu’s letters to his wife Mikako reveal that he was thankful that it was finally over. It may seem absurd, but his resignation, however, did not end the war. The Tokugawa regime’s grip on Japan was too strong for too long, and that ain’t a thing that dissolves overnight. Hence, some factions simply decided to carry on fighting against the Emperor – perhaps out of fear of change, or loyalty for Tokugawa, or mere inertia, or good old spite, which is a trait one can always count on to result in all sorts of stupidities. And the Shinsengumi – god bless their silly, stubborn asses – kept on fighting.
The Shinsengumi participated in two more battles that the Shogunate-without-the-Shogun would lose – at Koshu-Katsunuma and Nageyarama, each time ending up with fewer men, shattered hopes, and less reasons to persevere. And yet they kept on fighting.
In May 1868, a full month after Yoshinobu resigned, the remains of the group ended up surrounded by Meiji forces at Nageyarama. Hoping to obtain safe passage for his men, Isami Kondo decided to follow the example of some other eminent pro-Tokugawa lords and surrender. Toshizo advised him against it, yet Kondo insisted it was the right thing to do. Many lords did it and it turned out just fine for them, Kondo said. They got only a slap on the wrist and were allowed to retire in dignity, living calmly under house arrest. So if Kondo surrendered like a proper lord, he’d be treated with respect, the Shinsengumi would be allowed to retreat and heroically disband, and all would be right with the world.
On May 14th, Kondo gave himself over to the Meiji government.
But hatamoto or not, Isami Kondo was no real samurai. There were no centuries of family connections and blue blood behind him – for the new government, he was just a nasty little bugger who put them through hell during the years his troops were terrorizing Kyoto, a former peasant who was lucky enough to climb the social ladder so fucking high. And now he was about to fall from it. Painfully quickly, it became obvious that house arrest was not what the new government had in mind for Isami Kondo. As soon as he realized he was doomed, he asked his captors to arrange for him to commit seppuku. Yet seppuku was an honor that only the real samurai could have – and that’s what Kondo, as they reiterated many times, was not. So in the end he was executed like a common criminal. In the early morning of May 17th, Isami Kondo was beheaded in the back yard of an improvised prison in Itabashi, near Edo. His severed head was sent to Kyoto where it was put on a spike and displayed on the bridge across the Sanjo River, very near where the Ikedaya Inn once stood. It is said that many citizens of Kyoto came to spit in his face. But it is also said that many others wept.
(While Kondo’s head was rotting on that bridge, on the other side of the country, in Edo, a man was dying alone. Souji Okita was left abandoned by his comrades in a rented, empty house, ravaged by his disease and barely able to stand. Only his sister Mitsu came to visit and bring him food. Mitsu claimed that during his last days, Souji became obsessed with a black cat that supposedly came to the yard every afternoon to watch him die and gloat. He said that the cat was the spirit of Keisuke Yamanami who came to claim his dues, and begged for someone to chase it away. Souji Okita died on July 19th at the age of 25, choking on his own blood, after shambling around the yard trying to slay the black cat with his katana. Witnesses swore that there never were any cats matching the description in the neighborhood. But who knows with them cats.)
In late May, a few weeks after Kondo’s execution, the Shinsengumi – now counting less than a few dozen men – participated in the Battle of Utsunomiya Castle. That one was a real bitch. At first, the Shogunate forces were winning – they even managed to capture the goddamn Castle, in an attack led by Toshizo Hijikata himself. But the victory did not last long – soon, the new government sent reinforcements from the south, and the Shogunate troops were forced to withdraw, in a rush, suffering heavy blows yet again. Toshizo was wounded – a bullet to his left shoulder. Smashed bones, torn ligaments. A permanent disability.
The summer of 1868 was a difficult one for Toshizo Hijikata. According to his letters to Hikogoro Sato – the apothecary brother-in-law whom he’d left behind in Hino, even though they never lost touch – it seemed he was struggling with depression. Despite his efforts, the Shinsengumi now existed in name only. He saw their degradation as a personal defeat. Kondo’s death weighed heavily on him. He felt guilty not only that he was unable to prevent the execution, but also that he’d allowed his old friend to go off the rails oh so spectacularly. His wound was hurting. He had trouble sleeping, and when he did, he had nightmares. For the first time in his life, he was ridden with insecurities.
That fall, at the Battle of Bonari Pass – yet another defeat for the Shogunate – Toshizo gave the title of the Shinsengumi Commander to Hajime Saito, the only remaining core member of the group. He used his wound as an excuse, said he wasn’t fit to lead. Saito decided that the Shinsengumi would seek out Katamori Matsudaira, the man who’d created them, and support the war efforts of his Aizu clan, a rare pocket of Shogunate loyalists that still resisted the new government. Toshizo, however, shook his head. He wouldn’t be going with them. It was time to part ways. He’d sail north, he said. To Ezo.
And we finally arrive to the last act of our story: the Ezo Republic. The mother of all lost causes.
~to be continued~
Next chapter: The Hatamoto of Ezo
THE STORY OF TOSHIZO HIJIKATA - FINAL CHAPTER: The Hatamoto of Ezo