From Traitor to Count: Katsu Kaishū on the Rise and Fall of Reputation

Posted on January 3, 2026 by Romlus Hillsborough

Katsu Kaishū standing beside a chair in the garden of his Hikawa estate in Tokyo, photographed late in his life.

While revising Samurai Revolution for its expanded new edition, I’ve been rereading Katsu Kaishū’s later interviews—many of them at once hilarious and profound. One favorite comes from an 1895 Kokumin Shimbun (newspaper) interview, when Kaishū was seventy-three years old. In the interview he alluded to his title of count, bestowed by the Emperor eight years prior:

I’m naturally a bad person, which is why I put a market price on society. I know that when the price goes up, it’ll eventually go back down. When the price goes down, it’ll eventually go back up. And it never takes more than ten years for the market price to rise and fall. So, if I see that the price for me is down, all I need do is hunker down and wait a while—and sure enough it’ll rise again. The former villain and traitor Katsu Rintarō [Rintarō being his given name] is now Count Katsu Awa [his official name in later life]. But even if I act as if I’m important now, after a while I’ll only grow old and senile, and nobody will even bother to spit on me then. So anyway, that’s the way the market price of society is. A person who has the patience to wait out those ten years of rising and falling is a great man. And actually I’m one of them.

[Katsu Kaishū is the “shogun’s last samurai” of Samurai Revolution.]

A Universal and Timeless Passage from Samurai Revolution

Posted on January 1, 2026 by Romlus Hillsborough

Saigō Takamori (1828–1877), key figure in the overthrow of the Tokugawa Bakufu (Shogunate) and leader of the Meiji Restoration. Widely recognized as one of Japan’s most revered samurai.

[After the Meiji Restoration of 1868] Saigō disdained the extravagant lifestyles and arrogance of government officials in Tokyo, particularly central government leaders whom he considered “thieves” for their high salaries and residences in former estates of feudal lords, while the common people around them suffered. In one of his moral precepts he stated that a government leader, in order to carry out his office properly, must conduct himself frugally with utmost restraint and decorum, and “be on guard against extravagance,” as a role model for the people. But, he admonished, those leaders of the post-Restoration government who had installed themselves in stately residences, adorned themselves with the finest clothes, and “keep beautiful mistresses and contrive to enrich themselves,” could never accomplish the great tasks which comprised the very purpose of the Restoration.

Samurai Swordsmen: The Definitive History of the Shinsengumi (Helion, 2026) is now in production.
For professional guidance on Bakumatsu–Meiji Restoration history, see Historical Consulting.
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Revising Samurai Revolution: New Sources and an Enriched Historiography

Posted on December 16, 2025 by Romlus Hillsborough

I am pleased with the recent progress I have made in revising Samurai Revolution for a new edition. The revision reflects an enriched historiography grounded in expanded use of key primary sources, including the journals, letters, and memoirs of Katsu Kaishū, letters of Sakamoto Ryōma, Nakaoka Shintarō, and Saigō Takamori, and further analysis informed by leading Japanese historians. I’ll share publication updates as the project develops. Thank you to everyone following the work.

Two Masterpieces of Shinsengumi History and Lore

Posted on November 16, 2025 by Romlus Hillsborough

Shimosawa Kan’s Shinsengumi Shimatsuki and Hirao Michio’s Shinsengumi Shiroku

Hirao Michio’s Shinsengumi Shiroku (新撰組史緑)

Shimosawa Kan’s Shinsengumi Shimatsuki (新撰組始末記)

Shimosawa’s Shinsengumi Shimatsuki is an early account of the Shinsengumi. It was first published in 1928, just before Hirao’s groundbreaking history Shinsengumi Shiroku (original title, Shinsengumishi). Shimosawa’s book is partially based on interviews with former corpsmen and other people who had direct contact with the Shinsengumi. But he was first and foremost a novelist. He began the preface of his book by stating, “It is not my intention to write history.” Some of his information has been repudiated by more recent studies, whose authors have enjoyed the benefits of nearly a century of subsequent scholarship unavailable to Shimosawa. Accordingly, like other early histories of the Shinsengumi, Shimosawa’s book should best be taken for what it’s worth, and relished for its portrayal of the spirit of the men of Shinsengumi rather than a faithful history.

Hirao, on the other hand, was an historian, widely known for his writings about Tosa history, including biographies of Sakamoto Ryōma, Nakaoka Shintarō, and Yamauchi Yodō. Therefore, his historical narrative is more reliable than Shimozawa’s book, which reads more like a novel than a history—though, as Meiji Restoration historian Matsuura Rei observes, Hirao often does not cite sources and contains occasional errors.

I have many books about the Shinsengumi in my private library. Both of the above editions, two of my prize possessions, were published in 1967. I found them in used bookstores in Tokyo’s Kanda district years ago.

I refer to both books in my forthcoming Samurai Swordsmen: The Definitive History of the Shinsengumi, scheduled for publication in fall 2026 with Helion.

Reflections on Writing about a Different Time, Place, and Culture

Posted on November 16, 2025 by Romlus Hillsborough

In my forthcoming book Samurai Swordsmen: The Definitive History of the Shinsengumi (1863–1869), I wrote about Shinsengumi Vice-Commander Hijikata Toshizō’s anticipation of a war in Kyoto between Aizu and Satsuma based on the latter’s refusal to support the Bakufu in the imminent war against Chōshū in 1866. Katsu Kaishū, “the shogun’s last samurai” of my Samurai Revolution, was tasked with mediating between the two to resolve the problem peacefully.

Okay so I wrote about that. But as is sometimes the case after spending the day (or week or month or year or even decade) writing about this history, which was played out by men of a completely different time, place and culture than my own, I am struck by a sense of awe at the heaviness of my work—especially given that many of my main sources are in antiquated Japanese written by the men who made this history.

Main sources include three works from Katsu Kaishū, a book of letters by Hijikata Toshizō and Okita Sōji (annotated by Kikuchi Akira), and my own Samurai Revolution.