The Aburanokōji Incident

Itō Kashitarō's Enlistment and the Split of the Goryō Eishi

Itō Kashitarō was a swordsman of the Hokushin Ittō-ryū school and an erudite activist who had run a dojo in Fukagawa, Edo, during the Bunkyū era. In Genji 1 (1864), he accepted recruitment by Kondō Isami, who was seeking to expand the Shinsengumi's ranks. Through the mediation of his fellow disciple Tōdō Heisuke, he joined the group together with comrades including his younger brother Suzuki Mikisaburō and Shinohara Yasunoshin, and took the senior post of staff officer (sanbō). Known as a theorist well versed in kokugaku and military science, Itō commanded respect even within the Shinsengumi. However, unlike the strongly pro-shogunate policy of the Shinsengumi, he held firm sonnō tōbaku convictions, and his conflict with commander Kondō Isami over policy grew increasingly serious.

In the third month of Keiō 3 (1867), Itō and more than ten like-minded comrades left the Shinsengumi and formed the Goryō Eishi, under the pretext of guarding the mausoleum of Emperor Kōmei. Because they were based at Gesshin-in, a sub-temple of Kōdai-ji, they were also called the "Kōdai-ji Party." They are said to have pursued their own anti-shogunate activities while maintaining contact with Satsuma domain. Although the Shinsengumi and the Goryō Eishi outwardly maintained a friendly relationship, both sides sent spies to probe each other, and tension continued beneath the surface.

The Tense Political Situation Before and After the Taisei Hōkan

The Aburanokōji Incident took place in the eleventh month of Keiō 3. On the 14th day of the tenth month of that same year, Shogun Tokugawa Yoshinobu submitted the Taisei Hōkan, and the imperial court took over political power in an unprecedented transformation of government. The Imperial Restoration Proclamation was issued only about three weeks after this incident, on the 9th day of the twelfth month of that year, and Kyoto was entering the most tense period of confrontation between the shogunate and the anti-shogunate forces. Amid this situation, the Goryō Eishi's approach toward the anti-shogunate side appeared to the pro-shogunate Shinsengumi and Aizu domain as an intolerable threat.

Kondō and Hijikata's Decision to Purge

It is said that the Shinsengumi had long infiltrated Saitō Hajime into the Goryō Eishi side to carry out covert investigation. Based on reports from Saitō, Kondō and Hijikata are said to have received information that Itō, in league with Satsuma domain, was plotting to assassinate Kondō. However, later research has also raised doubts about whether this assassination plot actually existed, and no firm confirmation has been obtained. In any case, Kondō and Hijikata regarded Itō as a dangerous political rival and are said to have settled on a policy of eliminating the Goryō Eishi by force. For Kondō and Hijikata, who already had the precedent of an internal purge in the assassination of Serizawa Kamo (Bunkyū 3), forcibly removing senior officers who held opposing political lines was already an established method of organizational management.

Saitō Hajime had been a trusted member of the Shinsengumi since joining at the formation of the Mibu rōshigumi in Bunkyū 3 (1863). Although he formally went along with Itō's split when the Goryō Eishi was formed, he is said to have actually acted as an informant for the Shinsengumi. This double-agent role is an anecdote often noted in later Shinsengumi research, and it is recounted as one example of the espionage and covert investigation activities of the bakumatsu period. It has also been pointed out that around the time this purge was planned, the Shinsengumi's headquarters had already moved from Mibu to Nishi Hongan-ji and then to Fudōdō-mura, and that while the organization was strengthening its structure, it was also increasing its vigilance against hostile outside forces.

The Assassination — The Ambush at Aburanokōji

On the night of the 18th day of the eleventh month of Keiō 3 (December 13, 1867), Itō Kashitarō was invited to the residence of Kondō Isami's mistress, where he was warmly entertained with food and drink. It is said that the plan was to lower his guard and then attack him on his way home. On the return route, near Aburanokōji and Shichijō in Kyoto, Shinsengumi member Ōishi Kuwajirō and others lay in wait and attacked Itō. Itō drew his sword and fought back, but received a deep wound from the first blow and is said to have died soon after. The Shinsengumi left Itō's body at the scene and carried out a plan to lure out the Goryō Eishi comrades who would come to retrieve it, and wipe them out all at once.

Itō's body was left on the road at Aburanokōji, and Goryō Eishi comrades who heard of the incident rushed to the scene at midnight to retrieve it. The plan succeeded: seven Goryō Eishi comrades who came to the site, including Tōdō Heisuke, Hattori Takeo, and Mōnai Arinosuke, were attacked by Shinsengumi members who had been lying in wait. In the melee, Tōdō Heisuke, Hattori Takeo, and Mōnai Arinosuke were killed in battle, while some of the other comrades escaped and are said to have been given protection at the Satsuma domain residence. Regarding the number of Shinsengumi participants, there are various accounts ranging from 17 to 40–50, and the exact composition has not been determined. Tōdō Heisuke was a veteran member who had studied with Kondō and Hijikata at the Shiei-kan dojo, and the fact that he was killed by a man with whom he had been an old acquaintance is passed down as an anecdote symbolizing the internal-conflict character of this incident. Hattori Takeo and Mōnai Arinosuke were also powerful comrades who had joined in forming the Goryō Eishi, and with their deaths the Goryō Eishi lost most of its main strength in a single night.

Aftermath and the Dissolution of the Goryō Eishi

The Aburanokōji Incident is strongly characterized as a deceptive ambush deliberately engineered by the Shinsengumi, and it is known as one of the most thoroughly prepared purges of the bakumatsu period. As a result of the Aburanokōji Incident, the Goryō Eishi was effectively destroyed, and its surviving members went on to throw themselves into the anti-shogunate movement under the protection of Satsuma domain. This incident is known as the last large-scale internal purge of the Shinsengumi, and the group entered a turbulent period that soon led to the Battle of Toba-Fushimi and the eventual collapse of the Shinsengumi itself. In the first month of Keiō 4 (1868), the Shinsengumi, fighting as former shogunate forces, took part in the Battle of Toba-Fushimi and was defeated and routed. Commander Kondō Isami was captured by imperial forces not long after and beheaded, and vice-commander Hijikata Toshizō was killed in action at the Battle of Hakodate in the following year, Meiji 2 (1869). The Aburanokōji Incident is positioned as the prelude to this final phase of the Shinsengumi's collapse.

Figures and Swords Associated with the Incident

Itō Kashitarō was a swordsman who mastered the Hokushin Ittō-ryū and was also known as a scholarly figure well versed in kokugaku and military science. Tōdō Heisuke was one of the few veteran Shinsengumi members who left the Shinsengumi together with Itō, and he played a central role in the Goryō Eishi. Hijikata Toshizō, Kondō's right-hand man, consistently led the group's internal purges and control. The Aburanokōji Incident is positioned as one of the incidents that followed the lineage of internal purges under the Kondō-Hijikata leadership, which began with the assassination of Serizawa Kamo. Reliable records of the swords used by individual members are scarce, but this was an era in which swordsmen of various schools, such as the Hokushin Ittō-ryū and Tennen Rishin-ryū, fought with live blades in Kyoto during the bakumatsu period. The Aburanokōji Incident is remembered as one incident that symbolizes the feuds among swordsmen in Kyoto at that time. Gesshin-in, the base of the Goryō Eishi, is today a sub-temple of Kōdai-ji, and the fact that Itō and his group used it as a base for contacts with comrades in the anti-shogunate movement shows that temples in Kyoto during the bakumatsu period also functioned as a cover for political activity.

Historical Significance

The Aburanokōji Incident holds an important place in bakumatsu historical research as a symbolic event in which ideological conflict within the Shinsengumi, over whether to side with the shogunate or with sonnō tōbaku, developed into armed clash. Although the purge restored internal order for the Shinsengumi in the short term by eliminating Itō Kashitarō, a capable figure, it is also assessed as having led in the long term to the loss of talent and the rigidity of the organization. The area around Aburanokōji and Shichijō in Kyoto, where the incident took place, still has memorial monuments to Itō and his comrades in the Goryō Eishi, and they convey the ideological conflicts and sacrifices of bakumatsu activists to the present day. Occurring amid the rapid political shift from the Taisei Hōkan to the Imperial Restoration, this purge is positioned not merely as an internal dispute within the Shinsengumi, but as an event that condenses the tense relations between the pro-shogunate and anti-shogunate factions in Kyoto during the final period of the bakumatsu.