Shinsengumi Commander Kondō Isami and Vice-commander Hijikata Toshizō were glorified as heroes upon their return to their native Tama in early 1868, shortly after the fall of the Bakufu. In death, not long thereafter, they were apotheosized. On the grounds of Takahata Fudō temple in Hino (in Tama), the stone Monument of the Two Heroes was completed in 1888, twenty years after Kondō’s execution, nineteen years after Hijikata fell in battle. Over a century later a bronze statue of Hijikata was erected near the monument. As I wrote in the closing of Shinsengumi: The Shogun’s Last Samurai Corps, “[t]he right hand grips a sword. The left fist is clenched. The eyes… the eyes battle-ready, are ever prepared for death, to meet Kondo underground.”

This post relates to my forthcoming book, Samurai Swordsmen: The Definitive History of the Shinsengumi (1863–1869). See the Shinsengumi Hub for additional essays and updates.

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A few years after the Shinsengumi was formed in Kyoto in the spring of 1863, people in Hijikata’s native Hino could hardly believe reports of the bloodletting in Kyoto at the hands of the vice-commander because “he was such a gentle person,” according to one writer.  But “Toshizō was a different man with a real sword in hand.” Once when Hijikata briefly returned to Hino, he reportedly told a gathering of family and friends that the blade of one of his swords had “corroded” from overexposure to human blood.

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