Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast, episode 434, The Wrong Kind of Hero, Part 2.

On the morning of March 26, 1860, a band of samurai loyal to the daimyo of Hikone, Inauske,

was marching towards Eddo Castle.

Their lord, who had taken the role of Tyro, the senior advisor to the boy Shogun, Tokugawa Iamochi,

was on his way to an audience with the Shogun. There he would pay homage to the boy in whose name

he had cracked down on descent and tried to restore an old pattern of unquestioned obedience to Tokugawa authority.

And that crackdown had gone rather well.

An attempt to put Tokugawa Yoshinobu, son of the troublemaking Tokugawa Nariaki, into the

position of Shogun had been quashed. The lords who had pushed for that change,

like Yamauchi Toyosige of Tosa, had been placed under house arrest. Things seemed to be on a

good track for the Lord of Hikone and the hardliners who supported him. Sure, there had been some

uncertainty caused by the unequal treaties and the death of

the last shogun, and by weak and vacillating Tokugawa leaders who were unable to commit to firm

responses to either of those problems, but now those days were done. The House of Tokugawa once

again had a firm leader, and hey, it was a beautiful,

snowy day in late March, perfect for sitting back and reflecting on all that had been

accomplished while taking in the scenes of Edo on the way to honor and glory. At least personally,

I've always pictured E. Nauske and his retinue being rather satisfied with themselves as they approached the southern gate of Edo Castle, the so-called Sakuraramun or Cherry Blossom Field Gate, on the morning of March 26th.

That sense of satisfaction, if nothing else, would go a long way to explaining why they failed to notice that they were walking into an ambush.

Waiting for them, you see, were 18 loyalist Shishi, extremist samurai devoted to the cause of imperial loyalism.

Seventeen of them were from Mito Domain, whose Confucian scholars had so much influence on the loyalist movement, and whose lore to Tokugawa Nariaki, Inauske, had placed under house arrest.

One was from Satsuma in the far south. These loyalists ambushed the group just outside the gate, catching the Hikone samurai completely unprepared.

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