Disclaimer: This was translated from http://shinsengumi.info. The original article’s views are not my own.
----
Before dawn on September 16, 3rd year of Bunkyu. Serizawa Kamo, the head of the Shinsengumi bureau, was assassinated.
And a woman is killed in this incident.
Her name is Ume. It was a concubine of Serizawa Kamo.
Serizawa and Ume, the encounter was a reminder of debt
As we all know, the Shinsengumi's clothing is Dandara Haori, which imitates the play of 47 Ronin, but for the Shinsengumi, who were still poor at the time, it was never easy to tailor the clothing for all the members. It was never easy.
(In fact, not everyone wore the uniform)
In the end, the money will be in debt in the name of Serizawa, who was the director of the Shinsengumi bureau at that time.
The order for the troupe was received by Taibei Hishiya, a merchant from Shijohorikawa.
Hishiya has to remind him to pay the price, but the other party is Serizawa Kamo, a rough man. It was not uncommon for the clerk who went to collect the item to be threatened and run away.
Hishiya who is in trouble has a plan.
Women are softer than men, and I think they can collect the money without making waves.
So, he sent his mistress, Ume-san, to a wolf's nest, which is literally called the Mibu Wolf.
Why did Oume return to Serizawa after being assulted?
An unfathomable beginning
Ume-san was originally a geisha at a teahouse in Shimabara, and was transferred to Hishiya and spent her time as a concubine.
When she was 22 to 23 years old, she was a charming, beautiful woman with beautiful eyes and a tight mouth.
One day, Serizawa rapes Ume-san, who was ordered by Hishiya to go to Serizawa to urge him to borrow money.
The story of this story is written in various literatures and novels as
"She got raped" and
"Without logic, she decides to go back on her own",
but when I rewrite it flatly, it becomes like this.
Ume-san hated Serizawa at first, but eventually she started going to Serizawa...
Doesn’t this make you go “Huh? Why?”
However, I feel that it is quite impossible for that to have happened between the two of them.
In the first place, this testimony itself is based on the subjective testimony of Mr. Tamesaburo Yagi (a child of the Yagi family who was boarding the Shinsengumi) who was a boy who has not gone to the end of the year.
Well, he testified after he became an old man.
It is made into a novel by Kan Shimozawa, who interweaves his creations with fiction.
I wonder if it contains a lot of men's selfish illusions... (laughs)
It is strange to think that victims of sex crimes are willing to go to the perpetrators.
I think they fell in love normally.
Serizawa is often portrayed as a violent person, and I have a strong impression that he is a bad drunk (and there are many episodes according to that impression), but it seems that there was also a surprisingly delicate and gentle side to him.
When the Yagi family, who was taken care of by the Shinsengumi as a lodging facility, was unhappy, they took the initiative to call out to Kondo to help the receptionist of the condolences and make the children of the Yagi family laugh by drawing interesting pictures.
The Yagi family testified that Serizawa would have been a friendly and intelligent person if he had not drunk alcohol.
It’s just that there were extremely few "when not drinking"... (sorry)
Originally a genuine samurai born in a venerable samurai family, he was a major executive of the fierce Sonno Joi thought group, the Tengu Party.
It's no wonder Ume-san thinks it's more attractive than a man (Hishiya) who uses his mistress to collect debt.
The "Ronin Fumihisa Report Article" left by Shinpachi Nagakura, who was an executive of the Shinsengumi since the beginning of the Meiji era, also has the following description.
"Serizawa Kamo loved the concubine Ume of a house called Hishiya..."
It wasn't "robbed" or "raped", but just loved her.
Even if Ume-san seems to dislike Serizawa, she's actually just a tsundere, and she may not really dislike Serizawa.
The scene that is passionately arguing may have seemed to be forcibly attacking.
By the way, passionate and forcible are completely different.
Because he was a little boy, there may have been something that the boys thought they understood, even if they didn't understand it.
It's just a personal delusion, but I feel that thinking this way is still more intriguing than the story that "Ume-san was assaulted ."
However, in any case, the love with Serizawa eventually led Ume-san to a cruel death.
Three women in scene on the night of the assassination
On the night when Serizawa Kamo was assassinated, three men and three women, including Serizawa and Ume, were sleeping in the house of the Yagi family, which they used as a sleeping place.
The targets of the assassination are three men.
Of the three, Serizawa and his subordinate Hirayama were killed.
The latter, who was stabbed but pretended to be dead, avoided fighting and escaped in the shadow of the night.
If the assassin is an outsider, he wouldn’t have to run away.
Since it was their comrades, that is, the people inside the Shinsengumi, who came to kill them, they probably felt the danger of remaining in the corps and ran away.
And three women who shouldn't be the target.
One is Serizawa's mistress, Ume-san.
The other two are Shimabara's Tenjin, Itosato-san and Kichiei-san.
There are various theories that the two people other than Ume happened to be standing in the bathroom during the attack and were informed of the danger in advance, but they were both saved.
It is unlikely that the two women had successfully left the scene at the time the assassin stepped in, so it is probable that remedies were taken in advance.
Even from the assassination planner, the more targets you have, the more confused the scene will be, the harder it will be to achieve your original purpose, and the more humanity you want to help if you don't have to kill.
However, only Ume-san was different.
If she, like Itosato-san and Kichiei-san, was just with Serizawa as a job, or if she was in Serizawa's sleeping quarters just because she was scared and couldn't resist, her life would be saved. It may have been.
If you are advised, "Don't go back to sleep because it's dangerous," you just have to listen to it.
Perhaps it wasn't so, and they had no choice but to kill her.
If they let her know the danger in advance, Ume-san would tell Serizawa if he was at risk, I think that was the decision.
In fact, they may have been regarded as a couple.
In fact, when Serizawa's funeral was later held by the Shinsengumi, he also came up with a plan for a joint funeral between Serizawa and Ume-san.
However, this burial plan was not realized because Kondo Isami strongly opposed it.
He said that Serizawa, the director of the Shinsengumi bureau, and a plum-like saleswoman (!) Cannot be buried together.
As a result, Ume-san's corpse was left unattended for three to four days in the height of summer.
Hishiya also refused to pick up Ume-san's corpse, saying ,
"Because she has already given up her free time."
If the relationship has already broken, that's not unreasonable.
After all, it is said that the corpse was handed over to Ume-san's village in Nishijin by the Yagi family, or buried as an unrelated Buddha, but in reality it is uncertain.
