Author Archives: Romlus Hillsborough

Mamoru Matsuoka: A Tribute to a Major Historian of the Meiji Restoration

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Students and writers of Meiji Restoration history lost an important teacher this week with the passing of historian Mamoru Matsuoka in Kochi, Japan, his hometown, and also the home of major Restoration figures such as Sakamoto Ryōma, Takechi Hanpeita, and Nakaoka Shintarō, on whom he wrote insightful and meticulously researched biographies.

Of several fine biographies of Ryōma that I have read, Matsuoka-sensei’s Teihon Sakamoto Ryoma-den is the “authoritative edition,” as the title indicates. His works on Takechi and Nakaoka have been of particular value to me as a writer because of the dearth of reliable biographies about these two men.

Matsuoka-sensei was my friend. As a writer, I am greatly indebted to him. My deepest condolences to his family.

[The photo of Matsuoka-sensei was taken in the garden at the ancestral home of Takechi Hanpeita in Kochi, on November 13, 2015. These six of his books are, clockwise from upper left: “Nakaoka Shintaro-den” (biography of Nakaoka Shintaro); “Teihon Sakamoto Ryoma-den” (biography of Sakamoto Ryoma: authoritative edition); “Takechi Hanpeita-den” (biography of Takechi Hanpeita); “Takechi Hanpeita”; “Seiden Okada Izo” (authentic biography of Okada Izo); “Tosa Kinno-to Shuryo Takechi Zuizan: Mikokai Shiryo no Shokai” (Tosa Loyalist Party Leader Takechi Zuizan: A Presentation of Unpublished Materials)]

A Note On Ryoma, the Gunman

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The other day I was interviewed by John Dolan, co-host of a very fine weekly podcast called “Radio War Nerd,” which covers a wide range of military topics. John had read my Shinsengumi and became interested in the “samurai revolution.” He mentioned that many men had been butchered with swords during those years, and asked why samurai did not also use guns against their enemies. In my reply, I failed to mention the incident at the Teradaya inn in the outskirts of Kyoto, in which Sakamoto Ryoma famously used a Smith and Wesson revolver to defend against an attack by a Bakufu police unit, as depicted in this print published in Chikami Kiyomi’s early biography (1914). In Samurai Revolution, I translated Ryoma’s own account of the incident, as reported in a letter to his family. Following is a brief excerpt: Thinking that the enemy was going to attack from the [left] side, I shifted my position to face left. Then I cocked my pistol and I fired a shot at [the man] on the far right of the line of ten enemy spearmen. But he moved back, so I shot at another one, but he also moved back. Meanwhile, [others of] the enemy were throwing spears, and also hibachi [charcoal braziers], fighting in all sorts of ways. . . . Needless to say, the fighting inside the house made quite a racket. Now I shot at another man, but didn’t know if I hit him.

Smith & Wesson No. 2 Army revolver, same model carried by Sakamoto Ryoma

A Note On Katsu Kaishū: A Samurai of the Highest Moral Character

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Katsu Kaishū, “the shogun’s last samurai,” was not only an exceedingly interesting man but also one of the highest moral character – an attribute that seems to be sorely lacking among politicians and government officials today. By way of (partial) explanation, I offer the following edited excerpt from my Samurai Revolution:

In early 1868, Katsu Kaishū, as the commander of the forces of the fallen shogun’s regime, was prepared to take drastic measures rather than allow “millions of innocent people to die” in an imminent attack on the shogun’s capital of Edo, modern-day Tokyo, by the army of the new Imperial government. The drastic measures he had in mind were tied to the kenjutsu (Japanese swordsmanship) and Zen training of his youth. “Bushidō is found in dying,” asserts the key line of the memorable first chapter of Hagakure, the classic text of samurai values. Death was preferable to disgrace—there was “nothing particularly difficult” about it. Kaishū had reached that critical boundary line to which, it seems, the author of Hagakure had alluded a century and a half earlier. As ever, he wanted nothing more than peace; but, as ever, he would not have peace at any cost. Only a coward would choose life over death without achieving his objective—and Katsu Kaishū, for all his modern sensibilities, was a samurai through and through. Though his objective might be unachievable, he would never accept disgrace—for himself or for the Tokugawa.

[The photo of Katsu Kaishū, taken just before surrender of Edo Castle in spring 1868, is used in Samurai Revolution courtesy of Yokohama Archives of History.]

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.
Explore my books at Books at a Glance.

Katsu Kaishu’s Journal and Shinsengumi History

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In writing Bakumatsu-Meiji Restoration history, Katsu Kaishu’s journal of the era is one of my most important sources. This applies to the Shinsengumi as well. For while Kaishu did not have much direct encounter with the Shinsengumi leaders, including Kondo Isami and Hijikata Toshizo, he documented the political landscape of the era to such an extent, and he captured its cultural and social essence so succinctly, that I find his journal indispensable in writing my in-depth history of the Shinsengumi.

[The above is a photo of my personal copy of Bakumatsu Nikki (“Bakumatsu Journal”), Vol. 1 of the 22-volume Kodansha edition of Katsu Kaishu Zenshu, the collected works of Katsu Kaishu, published in 1976.]

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A Note On “Hitokiri Izō”

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The three most notorious assassins of the bloody Bakumatsu era (1853 – 1868)—Okada Izō, Tanaka Shimbé, and Kawakami Gensai—were from Tosa, Satsuma, and Kumamoto, respectively. All three bore the nom de guerre Hitokiri, literally “Man-Cutter”—which is really just another term for “murderer.” Izō was the chief hit man of Tosa Loyalist Party leader Takéchi Hanpeita, under whom he studied kenjutsu in Kochi (castle town of the Tosa daimyo) and also at the famed Momonoi Dōjō, one of the three most highly reputed kenjutsu schools in Edo, where Takéchi had served as head of students. As I wrote in Samurai Assassins,

The historical record of Okada Izō is scant. The historical novelist Shiba Ryōtarō writes of the “overly intense physical strength and stamina” with which “Hitokiri Izō” was naturally endowed. By age fifteen, perhaps even before studying under Takéchi, Izō had already started training on his own—not with a bamboo practice sword commonly used in the training hall but with a heavier and lethal oaken sword he had carved himself, “wielding it. . . from morning to night,” with such ferocity that his “body would be wasted,” thus developing extraordinarily powerful arms and the ability to handle a sword with great speed. As Shiba points out, the original purpose of a sword was to kill people. But “in the Tokugawa era it became a philosophy. Izō [however] . . .  taught himself fencing as a means of killing.” [end excerpt]

Izō was “intrepid by nature and fond of the martial arts,” wrote Tosa historian Teraishi Masamichi in 1928 (in Tosa Ijinden/“Biographies of Great Men of Tosa”). His sword “attack came swift, like a falcon, as was apparent in his nature—which was why [Takéchi] was so fond of him,” according to an early Takéchi biography published in 1912 (Ishin Tosa Kinnō-shi/“The History of Tosa Loyalism in the Meiji 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.
Explore my books at Books at a Glance.