was one of the Four Hitokiri of the Bakumatsu, elite samurai, active in Japan during the

late Tokugawa shogunate were the final years of the Edo period when the Tokugawa shogunate ended. Between 1853 and 1867, under foreign diplomatic and military pressure, Japan ended its isolationist foreign policy known as and changed from a feudal Tokugawa shogunat ...

in the 1860s.

Biography

The Hitokiri Shinbei worked under the command of Takechi Hanpeita, the leader of the Kinnō-tō, who sought to overthrow the

Tokugawa shogunate The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the was the military government of Japan during the Edo period from 1603 to 1868. The Tokugawa shogunate was established by Tokugawa Ieyasu after victory at the Battle of Sekigahara, ending the civil wars ...

and restore the

Emperor of Japan The emperor of Japan is the hereditary monarch and head of state of Japan. The emperor is defined by the Constitution of Japan as the symbol of the Japanese state and the unity of the Japanese people, his position deriving from "the will of ...

to power. Hanpeita ordered Shinbei and the other hitokiri to enact "Heaven's punishment" (天誅, Tenchū) against supporters of the Shogunate and supporters of foreign access to Japan. A hitokiri from the Satsuma District, Shinbei came from a peasant background. After his first high-level assassination, he was elevated to samurai status despite the traditional samurai disdain towards peasants. Shinbei was involved in the assassination of Ii Naosuke, the head of the

Edo Edo (), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the '' de facto'' capital of Japan from 1603 as the seat of the Tokugawa shogu ...

Council of Elders who was the head of administration for the Tokugawa shogunate in 1860. This assassination sparked years of violence in Japan especially in

Kyoto Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...

where assassinations became commonplace. Of all the Hitokiris, Shinbei killed the most people. Besides Naosuke, his victims included politicians such as Shimada Sakon, Ukyo Omokuni and Homma Seiichiro. He was also suspected of murdering a young woman named Komichi. Because of this, Tanakaba was titled ''"ansatsu taicho"'' (captain of assassins).Turnbull , Stephen. ''The Samurai Swordsman: Master of War''. Tuttle Publishing; 1 edition (August 5, 2014). p. 182. The

Shinsengumi The was a small secret police organization, elite group of swordsmen that was organized by commoners and low rank samurai, commissioned by the (military government) during Japan's Bakumatsu period (late Tokugawa shogunate) in 1863. It was ac ...

was formed in 1863 to suppress the hitokiri and Tosa loyalists and restore law and order. Shinbei's sword was found at the scene of the assassination of senior official near the Sarugatsuji. He was taken for questioning in Kyoto and asked to see the sword. He committed

seppuku , also known as , is a form of Japanese ritualistic suicide by disembowelment. It was originally reserved for samurai in their code of honor, but was also practiced by other Japanese people during the Shōwa era (particularly officers near ...

when he was given the sword.

References

Suicides by seppuku Samurai Japanese assassins 1832 births 1863 deaths 1860s suicides {{Samurai-stub