Assassination of Sakamoto Ryōma: Shinsengumi Suspected

Posted on August 1, 2025 by Romlus Hillsborough

[Note: Sakamoto Ryōma—whose life I chronicled in Ryoma: Life of a Renaissance Samurai—was assassinated in Kyoto near the end of 1867, at the pivotal moment when the Tokugawa regime was collapsing. Ryōma’s assassination is the subject of Part III of Samurai Assassins.]

[Imai Nobuo — Kyoto Mimawarigumi samurai who confessed involvement in the 1867 assassination of Sakamoto Ryōma]

During the years that the Shinsengumi were arresting and killing anti-Bakufu rebels on the streets and alleys of Kyoto, another Bakufu security force called Kyoto Mimawarigumi (Kyoto Patrol Corps) were doing the same thing. While the Shinsengumi corpsmen, from Commander Kondō Isami and Vice-commander Hijikata Toshizō on down, were rōnin, the Kyoto Patrol Corps generally consisted of direct vassals of the shogun. When a band of Mimawarigumi swordsmen, including Imai Nobuo, assassinated Sakamoto Ryōma and his cohort Nakaoka Shintarō at the former’s hideout in Kyoto around the end of 1867, the Shinsengumi were suspected. In 1870, Imai confessed to the authorities that he and others had acted under orders from their commander, Sasaki Tadasaburō, who was also involved. But Imai claimed that he had not had a hand in the actual killings, since he and two others had been downstairs guarding the place while the others went upstairs, where they attacked Ryōma and Nakaoka. Ryōma’s assassination is the subject of Part III of Samurai Assassins.

Imai’s confession notwithstanding, for decades it was “generally believed that Sakamoto Ryōma and Nakaoka Shintarō were killed by Kondō Isami and Hijikata Toshizō,” he said in 1900 in an interview for an article titled “Sakamoto Ryōma Satsugaisha” (“Sakamoto Ryōma’s Killers”). “But actually I did it.” As I wrote in Samurai Assassins,

Shinsengumi corpsman Shimada Kai denied that the Shinsengumi had anything to do with the assassinations, saying that they did not hear about the incident until the next day. Shimada’s claim is supported by another former Shinsengumi corpsman, Yūki Minizō. “We were at Kondō’s place that night,” Yūki recalled years later. “. . . When we heard about the assassinations the next day, we said to one another that whoever did it must have been a very skilled swordsman. . . . When we heard that it was Imai who had done it, it made sense. Imai was well known in Edo at that time for his great skill with a short sword. When he was set to attack, it was said that all you could see was his sword. Imai was the only person who could have done such work in such cramped quarters in so short a time.”

For on the assassination of Ryōma and Nakaoka, see An Indispensable Document for Knowing the Facts Regarding Ryōma’s Assassination.

The conflicting accounts of Ryōma’s assassination remain one of the enduring mysteries of the Bakumatsu era. I explore these events in detail in my forthcoming book, Samurai Swordsmen: The Definitive History of the Shinsengumi (1863–1869). For details see the Shinsengumi Hub.

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.

The Samurai, the Ship, and the Golden Gate

Posted on March 8, 2022 by Romlus Hillsborough

Katsu Kaishu’s portrait by US Navy sailor Edward Kern

On St. Patrick’s Day, 1860, the first Japanese warship to reach North America entered San Francisco Bay—a moment noted in the local Daily Alta California on March 18:

“His Imperial Japanese Majesty’s war steamer Candinmarru, commanded by Kat-sin-tarroh, a Captain in the Japanese Navy, arrived in our harbor yesterday, and anchored off Vallejo street wharf, at three o’clock P.M., after 37 days’ passage from Uragawa. . . .”

The Daily Alta, of course, was referring to the arrival of the Japanese warship Kanrin Maru, captained by Katsu Kaishū, the “shogun’s last samurai” of my book Samurai Revolution. The American journalists really had no way to know the correct transliteration of the Japanese names, probably because at that early date there was still no standardization thereof—and they certainly bastardized the pronunciation (Katsu Kaishū was his pseudonym; his given name was Katsu Rintarō).

Following is an excerpt from the book (without footnotes):

At dawn of the thirty-eighth day at sea, Katsu Kaishū caught his first sight of the North American continent—and one can only imagine the intense interest with which he took up his binoculars to view through dense fog the coastal mountains in the distance, “like great waves rising above the clouds,” he wrote in a journal-like account of his San Francisco experience in History of the Navy. The captain would have been standing on the deck of his warship—a white banner emblazoned with the red rising sun flying at the mainmast; at the mizzenmast a signal flag of red and white displaying [Admiral] Kimura’s family crest of an encircled diamond. As the Kanrin passed safely through the strait called the Golden Gate, into San Francisco Bay, Kaishū paid special attention to the forts on the north and south shores, for the state-of-the-art military technology naturally concerned the military scientist who would construct modern batteries on the coast of his own country. To this purpose, during his sojourn in and around San Francisco he kept meticulous notes. The battery at Fort Point, on the south shore, he wrote,”is equipped with tens of large guns. The battery is made entirely of brick, with loopholes at three levels. The flat upper surface, sixty or seventy ken [around 109 or 127 meters] in length and of a suitable width, is large enough to mount smaller guns. From the outside there appears to be plenty of room for posting sentries at the rear. On the hillside on the left [north] shore are lights for targeting vessels entering and leaving the bay.”

From the topography of the city, “with mountains on all four sides,” Kaishū was struck by “its similarity to our Nagasaki.” Presently, a tugboat approached. “Two of its men boarded our ship. . . . We requested them to lead us [further] into the bay.” “They were going to salute us with cannon fire from land,” wrote Fukuzawa Yukichi, who sailed on the Kanrin as a steward to Kimura. “If they were going to salute us, then we had to return the honor.” But the captain hesitated on the grounds that his tiny ship might not withstand the shock. Meanwhile, Senior Officer Sasakura Kiritarō was eager to return the salute. “No,” said the captain. “Rather than attempting to return the salute and failing, it would be better to let the matter alone.” But Sasakura was determined. “I can do it,” he said. “I’ll show you.” “Don’t be stupid,” the captain retorted. “There’s no way you can do it. But if you try and succeed, you can have my head.” Permission granted, Sasakura ordered some of the men to clean the guns and prepare the gunpowder. He returned the salute superbly, as Kaishū probably expected, assisted by Junior Officer Akamatsu Daizaburō, who used an hourglass to time the intervals between shots. Then Sasakura got his feathers fluffed up and strutted right up to his captain. “Your head belongs to me,” he announced for all to hear. “But I think you’d better keep it where it is for a while. I’m sure you’ll be needing it during the rest of our voyage.” Sasakura’s remark drew laughter from the entire company.

[Katsu Kaishū, portrait by U.S. Navy sailor Edward Kern (1860)]

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Katsu Kaishū is the “shogun’s last samurai” of Samurai Revolution, the only biography in English.

Katsu Kaishū’s “Notebook of Deceased Friends”

Posted on June 26, 2020 by Romlus Hillsborough

Katsu Kaishū, “the shogun’s last samurai” of Samurai Revolution, was a prolific writer. Recently I’ve been thinking about one of his books, Bōyūchō (“Notebook of Deceased Friends”), which he wrote in 1877 (at age fifty-seven), nine years after the Meiji Restoration, about ten important historical personages of that era. Following is an edited excerpt (without footnotes) from Samurai Revolution:

Though Katsu Kaishū had not mentioned Saigō Takamori’s death in his journal, shortly after Saigō died he produced a small book of late great men of the Meiji Restoration. It is clear that Saigō was foremost on his mind—but he could not explicitly dedicate the book to him. Bōyūchō (Notebook of Deceased Friends) is an annotated compilation of letters, poems, and paintings in the original calligraphic brushwork, which Kaishū personally had received from eight late friends “over my career of thirty years.” (The book actually covers ten men, but Kaishū possessed calligraphic works addressed to himself from only eight of them.) . . . . Included beside Saigō are (in order of appearance): Sakuma Shōzan, Yoshida Torajirō (Shōin), Shimazu Nariakira, Yamauchi Yōdō . . ., Katsura Kogorō, Komatsu Tatéwaki, Yokoi Shōnan, Hirosawa Hyōsuké, and Hatta Tomonori. Yokoi and Saigō are allotted the most space, with three works included from each of them. But Saigō alone is alluded to (if only implicitly) in the Introduction and it was with Saigō’s poem, Zangiku(“Chrysanthemums of Early Winter”), that Kaishū concluded the book.

A Note On Ryoma, the Gunman

Posted on April 23, 2020 by Romlus Hillsborough

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

Note on “Samurai Assassins”

Posted on November 20, 2019 by Romlus Hillsborough

I have been studying Meiji Restoration history for more than thirty years, since I began research for my novel about Sakamoto Ryōma while living in Tokyo. In all of my books, I have explored the personalities of the leading actors in this history, presenting it as a human drama of epic proportion—thus bringing it to life.

Samurai Assassins was published in 2017. As I wrote in the Preface, the book is more than just a chronicle of “dark murder” [assassination] in the revolution [Meiji Restoration]. It is also an in-depth study of the ideology of the men behind the revolution, including bushidō, the code of the samurai, and the philosophy of Imperial Loyalism, which informed the revolution and would become the foundation of the Emperor-worship of World War II.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first book in English to correlate bushidō and Imperial Loyalism in their respective indispensible roles in the Meiji Restoration. My previous book, Samurai Revolution, is a comprehensive history of the Meiji Restoration and the first ten years of Imperial rule. Samurai Assassins provides an in-depth overview of the Meiji Restoration, while focusing on significant men and events, and ideology, not expatiated in my previous book.

[The assassination of Ii Naosuke is the subject of Part I of Samurai Assassins. One of Ii’s assassins, Arimura Jizaemon of Satsuma, who delivered the coup de grâce, is depicted on the cover of the book. The image is part of a series entitled Kinseigiyuden (“Biographies of Loyal and Courageous Men”) by Ichieisai Yoshitsuya (1822 – 1866), originally published in a magazine called “Nishikie.”]

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Recently I have been focusing on my forthcoming Samurai Swordsmen: The Definitive History of the Shinsengumi (1863–1869), scheduled for publication in fall 2026 with Helion. I also provide consulting on Bakumatsu–Meiji Restoration history and culture to authors, editors, publishers, documentarians, producers, screenwriters, translators, and other professionals who need expert guidance on the era.

See overviews of my other books at Books at a Glance.

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