Late Edo period (Bakumatsu)1844-1869

Iba Hachirō

伊庭八郎

The one-armed Shingyōtō-ryū swordsman known as the "Little Tengu of Iba," fallen at Hakodate

Era

Late Edo period (Bakumatsu)

Lifespan

1844-1869

Associated Sword Tradition

Shingyōtō-ryū

Description

Origins and Shingyōtō-ryū

Iba Hachirō (1844-1869), personal name Hidesato, was a shogunal retainer and swordsman of the closing years of the Tokugawa era. He was born the eldest son of Iba Gunbei Hidenari, head of the Shingyōtō-ryū school, which maintained the Renbukan dōjō in Edo. Tradition holds that as a boy he preferred books to the sword, but once he applied himself in earnest he revealed extraordinary talent and became known as the "Little Tengu of Iba." Shingyōtō-ryū was one of the widely practised schools of Edo, and the Iba house stood at its centre.

Service to the Shogunate

From around 1864 he served as an okuzume guard to the shogun, and in 1866 he joined the Yūgekitai, an elite unit of the shogunate. He would go on to fight the Boshin War not only as a celebrated swordsman but as a commander of troops in the field.

The Battle of Hakone-Yamazaki and the Loss of His Arm

In 1868 the Yūgekitai fought the new government's forces on the side of the former shogunate in the Kantō and Hakone regions. At the battle of Hakone-Yamazaki, Hachirō took a sword cut to the left wrist from Takahashi Tōgorō, a samurai of the Odawara domain, and also suffered a gunshot wound. Carried on a wooden door by his attendant and treated, he nonetheless lost his left arm and fought thereafter with one arm.

The Hakodate War and His Death

He subsequently joined Enomoto Takeaki's fleet, crossed to Ezo, and fought in the Hakodate War. Gravely wounded by a gunshot to the chest at the battle of Kikonai, he died at the Goryōkaku fortress in 1869 at the age of twenty-six. He is said to have taken his own life with morphine supplied by Enomoto. He was an old acquaintance of Hijikata Toshizō, vice-commander of the Shinsengumi, and the two met their end in the same Hakodate campaign.

Legacy

The image of a man who went on wielding a sword after losing an arm was handed down as that of the last swordsman of the Bakumatsu era. Anecdotes claiming that he cut down enemies even after the amputation are strongly legendary in character and their historicity is uncertain, but they attest to the deep impression his skill and spirit left on his contemporaries.