[Japanese Martial Arts Anecdote] Talk about the assassination at the end of the curtain

The gym will perform martial arts at the end of August. After the field survey, I will stop at a nearby coffee shop. That morning, Shinzo Abe was shot in Nara, and he saw the news of Abe's death shortly after sitting down. While sighing, several friends couldn't help but chat about the "assassination".

Although in modern animation, film and television creation, the image of the assassin is often beautified. But in reality the cost of assassination is high. For example, in the 34th year of the Meiji era, the chief family of the heart-shaped swordsman, Ito Nantaro, assassinated Congressman Seoheng in the daytime. Wanting Taro to be captured immediately after the murder, it was later discovered that he had written a letter before the assassination: "In order not to implicate his wife, he separated from his wife (divorced) . .. The Iting family was cut off. [1] "Kantaro was sentenced to life imprisonment and died in prison. The inheritance of the heart-shaped knife flow Yiting family has been cut off since then.

Assassination incidents in the end of the era of Japan can be said to be endless, and some assassins, such as Okada Izo and Kawagami Hikizhai, also have romantic stories and legends in their later creations. But is assassination really that romantic? Like "Excalibur", does the "assassin" (?) with one block and one hundred really exist? The topic I want to talk about today starts with the assassination at the end of the curtain.

The Change Outside Sakurada Gate

On March 3, Ansei 7, in response to the "Ansei Great Prison [2] ", several samurai warriors from the Mito and Satsuma domains attacked the team of Naobi Ii, the shogunate chief, and Ii was shot and beheaded.

According to eyewitnesses, it was snowing heavily that day, and the daimyo guards wore waterproof bags over their knives. One of the assassins pretended to have a written statement to appeal, and after approaching the ranks of the team, he directly attacked with a knife. As the attackers quickly shortened the distance, the two sides fought fiercely, often directly colliding with knives and e. Many severed noses, fingers, ears, etc. were left at the scene after the incident.

The only calm person at the scene was Kawasai Chuzaemon, a famous swordsman from the Hikone Domain at the time, who was good at making two swords. According to eyewitnesses, Hexi calmly kept a distance from the attackers, removed the waterproof bag and hood, and drew his swords to meet the enemy. As a result, after hacking one person to death, he was double-teamed by several people and died on the spot [3] .

"The change outside the Sakurada gate" can be said to be the prelude to the various assassination incidents at the end of the opening. Also because of the rampant Tianzhu (assassination incident), the shogunate at that time had to organize various vigilance organizations such as the Shinsengumi and Mihui to maintain law and order. And these two groups later also carried out assassination from time to time, such as the well-known Sakamoto Ryoma, it is said that he died under the seehui group [4] .

Four people cut

Later generations said that there were the so-called Four Great Killers (that is, the four major killers) at the end of the curtain, namely Tanaka Shinbei, Okada Izo, Kawagami Hikosai, Nakamura Hanjiro [5] and so on. Among them, He Shang is also the prototype of Kenshin Feicun, the protagonist of "Excalibur". These names may look cool in novels, anime, and movies, but that's not the case in the real world.

Nakamura Hanjiro changed his name to Kirino Liqiu after the Meiji period, and was appointed to the army major general. In the sixth year of Meiji, he resigned from office and returned to Kagoshima with Takamori Saigo. He died in the Southwest War in the tenth year of Meiji. After the death of Banjiro , he was regarded as a bandit army, and he was deprived of his official position. In comparison, Nakamura was a decent death. The other three were not so lucky.

Okada Izo and Tanaka Shinbei were arrested for their deeds at the end of the curtain. Tanaka committed suicide by cutting his abdomen while Okada was beheaded. In the fourth year of Meiji, Kawagami Hikosai (Takada Genbei) was beheaded and executed in Kodenmacho, Tokyo. According to the people of the time, He Shang was executed because he insisted that the King of Qin would push the barbarians away [7] .

These four killers are all so-called "people with lofty ideals of expelling foreigners." However, no matter who the killers are, until the Great East Asian War, where militarism is rampant, Japan has not really carried out the extermination of foreigners. I am afraid that the four of them are also very confused about what they achieved by getting their hands dirty.

consequences of violence

The swordsmanship of the aforementioned four killers was mostly self-taught. Although Okada Izo has studied the Ono Ichito-style, the Kyo Shin-ichi-style, etc., and Banjiro is mostly influenced by the pill self-introduction and the show, but it is difficult to say that he came from these schools [8] , and I am afraid that there are few today. The genre will jump out and say, "So-and-so killer is from our gym". Assassination is not a glorious thing after all.

Looking at the assassination practices of the so-called patriots at the end of the Bakubaku, they often killed the interpreter of the embassy and burned the embassy [9] ; or they continued to hunt down and kill the relevant persons of the Anzheng prison, and even killed concubines and concubines. These measures are not so much a slaying of guilt, but a terrorist attack. After all, historical trends cannot be affected by killing individual lives. In fact, after examining the situation at the end of the curtain, it is difficult to say what the assassination action has achieved, whether it is the fall of the curtain or the samurai. On the contrary, this kind of behavior similar to fighting has relieved the collective hearts of many lower-level samurai and civilians after the arrival of the black ship to a certain extent. anxiety. With the start of the war after the death of Ryoma, these people who were originally restless in the dark finally had a normal channel to vent, and assassination incidents became less prevalent.

After all, it is very difficult to achieve things through violence alone. As mentioned above, Anzheng Prison led to Naobi Ii's own assassination; and the four people were able to kill Kawagami Hikosai, who was considered to be both civil and military. I was so embarrassed, so I stopped doing assassinations... I thought the samurai would kill myself if I was so embarrassed, but it turns out that he still cherishes his life.

After the Meiji period, Kawagami Hikosai was eventually turned into an abandoned child and was sent to the execution ground by the former "comrades". It is worth mentioning that Katsu Kaishu, who later contributed to the bloodless opening of the castle in Edo, was granted the exemption of Zhixin Yingliu when he was young. And the well-known "escape Kogoro", the post-Meiji statesman Takayuki Kido, is a free-for-all of Shinto no-nonsense style. Although it was said that assassination at that time did not require any rank qualifications, but if they carried out the assassination, it should not be too bad. A clear-headed person understands: Fast and furious is hard to achieve constructive results.

Let's go too far, let's go back to the assassination at the end of the curtain

In the Meiji period, Katsu Kaishu recalled the rampant assassination situation at that time: "Since the death of Ii-no...about four or five thousand people were lurking in Edo-Kyoto, most of them were ronin who voluntarily left the domain, or after assassinating the chief of the domain. There are about five or six hundred people who are willing to try to assassinate the people who run away, or who are generous and worried about the country, swordsmen, etc.. It is agreed that regardless of the ignorant and wise, whoever kills a foreigner will be able to sit at the top of the meeting. , the audience is respected. The second target of assassination is the shogunate officials, foreign merchants and other traitors... [11] " Well, it was probably because there were too many bans in the Edo period, so once the port opened, everyone became excited (mistakenly).

This article is simultaneously published in the author's square column

Notes:

[1] Refer to Akioka Nobuhiko "Tokyo Agricultural University ものがたり (86)"

[2] The Ansei Great Prison was the suppression of the Tokugawa sect by the Tokugawa Shogunate against the Yiji and Ichibashi factions between the fifth and sixth years of Anzheng (1858-1859), involving more than 100 people. The lords of the three domains of Owari, Mito, and Fukui were ordered to live in seclusion, and Yoshida Shoin, a well-known thinker at the end of the Tokugawa period, was also executed. Refer to Ichiri Hanto's "History of the End of the Bakuboku" pp84-91

[3] Refer to Takahashi Masaki's "Japanese History of Samurai" pp173-177.

[4] Regarding the death of Sakamoto Ryoma in November of the third year of Keio (1867), since the former members of the Mihui Group after the Meiji Period had personally admitted to the attack, it is generally believed that the assassination was carried out by Sasaki only Saburo of the Mihui Group and others. Interestingly, in October of the same year, General Tokugawa Keiki had already returned the Great Policy. In other words, the Satsuma Choshu domain has no reason for King Qin. Therefore, there are still different opinions about the reason for Ryoma's assassination. Some say that it was the resentful revenge of the Samu faction, and some say that the Sachang faction first got rid of the anti-war faction of Ryoma in order to start the war.

[5] Among the four, Tanaka Shinbei was the son of the boat family, and Nakamura Hanjiro was the exiled sinner. Okada Izo was born in Ashikari (a low-rank samurai), and only Kawagami Hikosai came from a higher background and was the adopted son of a vassal. It is called the Four Great People Killing not because of martial arts or the number of people killed, but because the targets of these four people are the most famous or the most influential. Refer to Kuro Tetsuhiro's "Assassination at the end of the curtain"

[6] The so-called restoration of reputation refers to posthumous posthumous titles. Another interesting fact is that the war dead since the Boshin War were enshrined in the Yasukuni Shrine in Japan, but the war dead from the Edo shogunate and the Saigo Takamori faction in the Southwest War were all regarded as North Korean enemies, Therefore, the pirate army has not been enshrined in the shrine until now.

[7] Refer to Suminosuke Kawashima's "Kurume Domain is Difficult to Remember" p427, Tachikawa Tereshin "Kawagami Hikosai, a Takada Genbei and Tsuruzaki"

[8] Refer to Kuro Tetsuhiro's "Assassination at the end of the curtain"

[9] In the seventh year of Ansei (1860), the interpreter of the American embassy was assassinated, and in 1862, the British embassy was set on fire by Takayama Shinsaku, Ito Hirobumi, Inoue Kaoru and others. Interestingly, these patriots who were concerned about the country left after killing and setting fires. Of course, the embassies of various countries sought compensation from the shogunate. From the perspective of comparative conspiracy theories, these practices are simply a deliberate drain on the shogunate's financial resources.

[10] In the 92nd year of the text (1862), Tada with a sword and Murayama Koshou Jiang were assassinated. The two were the concubine and son of someone sent by Iiichi, and the geisha who was fostered. Refer to Sasabe Masari ""People Killing" and the Politics of the End of the Bakuboku"

[11] Quoted from Sheng Haizhou's "Chicken Ribs" pp12-13, translated into Chinese by the author.