The Shinsengumi and Mibu — The Band of Swordsmen Who Policed Kyoto
When speaking of Bakumatsu Kyoto, the Shinsengumi cannot be passed over. A band of swordsmen who kept order in a turbulent capital, they became, through fierce and brief activity, an emblem of the end of an age.
Contents
Gathering at Mibu
The Shinsengumi's beginnings trace back to rōnin assembled to guard the shogun. Some remained in Kyoto and began operating as a band charged with keeping order in the city. Their base was the district of Mibu in Kyoto.
Called the "Mibu rōshi" at first, they came to call themselves the Shinsengumi. At their core were Kondō Isami and Hijikata Toshizō, bound together at a Tama fencing school.
Iron discipline
The Shinsengumi were known for holding the corps to strict regulations. To keep from sliding into a mere rabble, those who broke the code faced merciless punishment.
This severity forged a band of mixed origins into a sharp organization. Under a structure in which vice-commander Hijikata supported commander Kondō, the Shinsengumi came to be feared as an armed band that kept the peace of Kyoto.
The Ikedaya Incident
What suddenly raised the Shinsengumi's name was the Ikedaya Incident, in which they raided "revere the emperor, expel the barbarians" activists gathered at an inn in Kyoto. The affair announced their existence to the whole realm.
At the same time, it made them the object of deep hatred among the activists. Their activity was always charged with a tension like walking the edge of a blade.
At the end of the upheaval
As the age tilted decisively toward overthrowing the shogunate and the Boshin War began, the Shinsengumi fought as part of the old shogunate's forces. But amid a modern style of warfare in which guns were the main force, the fighting of men who relied on the sword was gradually driven into hardship.
Even after losing Kondō, Hijikata fought on all the way to Hakodate. With the end of the age of the sword, the Shinsengumi too brought down the curtain on their history.
Ideal and violence, loyalty and tragedy — in the existence of the Shinsengumi, the contradictions of the age are distilled.
The figures who led the Shinsengumi can be traced in the articles of Bakumatsu Figures.
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