Not to be confused with the Shinsengumi book I’m currently working on, this reprinting is scheduled for release September 2020. (I don’t anticipate finishing the next one for at least a couple more years.)

• Historical Background of the Tennen Rishin Style of Japanese Swordsmanship (practiced by Shinsengumi Commander Kondō Isami, Vice-commander Hijikata Toshizō, and other founding officers of the corps)
• Comparisons of the Practice of Kondō and Hijikata
• Swords Favored by Kondō and Hijikata 

More details are here.

I’ve completed Part 2 of what I think will be four parts of the next Shinsengumi book, which I began writing about two and a half years ago. In August 2017, about a month into this project, I thought that, ““without stumbles, confusion, unexpected (i.e., new) discoveries, misunderstandings . . . ,“ I might finish within a couple years. But the deeper I got into it, the deeper I’ve delved. It’s a time-consuming occupation. I hope to finish within the next two or three years.

Thanks to all of my readers for their support.

Think big, create, persevere!

[The photo of the original miniature Shinsengumi banner appears in my Shinsengumi: The Shogun’s Last Samurai Corps, courtesy of Hijikata Toshizo Museum.]

 

“The men of the Shinsengumi . . . have insight . . . and high purpose,” said a supervisor of the Mimawarigumi (“Kyoto Patrol Corps”), a Bakufu security force that briefly rivaled the Shinsengumi. Initially the Shinsengumi “felt contempt” for their rivals, according to a former Mimawarigumi corpsmen.

All I will add here is that I am progressing slowly but very surely with this book. 

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Matsudaira Katamori, daimyo of Aizu, was officially appointed by the Bakufu as protector of Kyoto (Kyoto shugoshoku) in the early fall of 1862 at age twenty-seven. During the following six years that he held this high post, he had the dubious responsibility of protecting the Emperor, whom he revered, and the Imperial Capital, not only from the “foreign barbarians” who had been threatening the country since Perry’s first arrival nearly a decade past, but also from the anti-Bakufu “Imperial Loyalists” who were intent on “expelling the barbarians.” For the latter purpose he employed the service of the Shinsengumi, who were no less determined to drive out the foreigners and devoted to “Imperial Loyalism” than the rebels they hunted and killed.

[This photo of Matsudaira Katamori is used in Samurai Assassins, courtesy of the National Diet Library, Japan. Matsudaira Katamori is also featured in Shinsengumi: The Shogun’s Last Samurai Corps.]

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The founding members of the Shinsengumi stayed at the home of Yagi Gennojo in the village of Mibu, in the western outskirts of Kyoto. Despite their fearsome reputation, “They weren’t violent with the people in the neighborhood,” recalled Yagi’s son, Tamesaburo, years later. But from their “rowdy” mannerism, “the way they spoke and walked through the streets,” people were afraid of them. They set up headquarters at the Maekawa house across the street from the Yagi house. From headquarters they sent out “units of twenty men each, each man carrying a spear over his shoulder, to patrol Kyoto.” As for the much-touted uniform of blue linen jackets with white stripes on the sleeves, “Only about one or two men in ten wore it.” But “since it wasn’t such a nice uniform,” it gradually fell out of use.

The above statements from Yagi are reported by Shimozawa Kan, the iconic chronicler of Shinsengumi history and lore, who interviewed him “dozens of times” at his home in Mibu beginning in November 1928.

[The above photo of the original Miniature Shinsengumi Banner appears in my Shinsengumi: The Shogun’s Last Samurai Corps, courtesy of Hijikata Toshizo Museum.]

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