Mapping Izo's Hometown
Here’s an 1830s map of Kochi castle and the surrounding castle town where Okada Izo grew up once his family relocated to Enokuchi village when he was 10 years old. Sadly, I haven’t been able to find a higher quality scan, but I did try to map some of the known locations of Izo’s life. (I don’t guarantee their absolute accuracy because I’m trying to compare to a modern map and most of this map isn’t legible, but I’m fairly certain I’m at least close.)
The big area surrounded by water at the top left is Kochi castle, obviously, which is a major landmark still easy to locate on a modern map, even though the moats no longer exist now. The area surrounding it with all the little land plots labeled, some even with their family crests, are the samurai residences, which would have belonged the joshi (upper class samurai), while the kashi (lower class samurai) lived in areas further from the castle.
The yellow area across the Enokuchi river at the top of the map roughly corresponds to modern day Aioicho and was the approximate location of Shichiken-machi, “seven eaves row”, where Izo’s home stood, a part of Enokuchi village. A low ranking samurai home, it was likely a plot with a simple gate and perhaps a little garden at the back of the property to grow vegetables.
The area marked in green is where I think Takechi Hanpeita’s home and dojo were located, based on comparison to modern maps. This area corresponds to the upper end of Hokobori Park now, which has a maker and plaque with a sketch of the home (below). In the sketch, the dojo is the structure in front, which is separated from the main home where Takechi lived with his wife, Tomiko, and his grandmother.
We even know roughly the size of Takechi’s dojo, 6 ken wide and 4 ken deep, which Google tells me is roughly 36 by 24 feet (11 by 7.3 meters, for my metric friends) or about 48 tatami mats. A pretty sizeable training hall with a thatched roof.
Here’s an 1830s map of Kochi castle and the surrounding castle town where Okada Izo grew up once his family relocated to Enokuchi village when he was 10 years old. Sadly, I haven’t been able to find a higher quality scan, but I did try to map some of the known locations of Izo’s life. (I don’t guarantee their absolute accuracy because I’m trying to compare to a modern map and most of this map isn’t legible, but I’m fairly certain I’m at least close.)
The big area surrounded by water at the top left is Kochi castle, obviously, which is a major landmark still easy to locate on a modern map, even though the moats no longer exist now. The area surrounding it with all the little land plots labeled, some even with their family crests, are the samurai residences, which would have belonged the joshi (upper class samurai), while the kashi (lower class samurai) lived in areas further from the castle.
The yellow area across the Enokuchi river at the top of the map roughly corresponds to modern day Aioicho and was the approximate location of Shichiken-machi, “seven eaves row”, where Izo’s home stood, a part of Enokuchi village. A low ranking samurai home, it was likely a plot with a simple gate and perhaps a little garden at the back of the property to grow vegetables.
The area marked in green is where I think Takechi Hanpeita’s home and dojo were located, based on comparison to modern maps. This area corresponds to the upper end of Hokobori Park now, which has a maker and plaque with a sketch of the home (below). In the sketch, the dojo is the structure in front, which is separated from the main home where Takechi lived with his wife, Tomiko, and his grandmother.
We even know roughly the size of Takechi’s dojo, 6 ken wide and 4 ken deep, which Google tells me is roughly 36 by 24 feet (11 by 7.3 meters, for my metric friends) or about 48 tatami mats. A pretty sizeable training hall with a thatched roof.
For those wondering, Sakamoto Ryoma’s home is a little ways off the map on the bottom left, and there’s a birthplace marker and the Sakamoto Ryoma Hometown Museum on the site today. The Okada family graveyard is off the map past the top right, in what is now the wooded cemetery hill behind Sawada Mansions condominiums.
You may notice I also plotted a small pink area to mark the location of Yamada-machi prison, which was located in the area where Yamada bridge stands today. I’m not actually sure how big the jail was and of course the text isn’t legible on the map, so use this as an estimate if the location more than anything. This is where Izo, Takechi Hanpeita, and their comrades in the Kinnoto were imprisoned. And yes, I included this just so you can see how close to his family home he was during the ten months he was imprisoned and tortured for information.
Yamada-machi prison no longer exists as the area made way to modern development, but a small building of the old prison has been preserved and relocated to the grounds of Kunteki shrine (pictured below).
One location that’s not on the above map is a place called Karigiri Kawara, the river bank near what is now Momiji Bridge, which on the 1830s map would be way past Sakamoto Ryoma’s home beyond the bottom left of the map. The gravel riverbed served as the domain’s execution grounds and Izo’s head was on display near where the modern bridge now spans the Kagami river. According to Google, that’s about an hour’s walk from Yamada-machi prison, which meant that Izo would have been paraded through most of the castle town before being beheaded.