江戸物語

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Finally found an "Official Business" chochin for my collection and even though it was covered in what appears to have been a whole roll of bubble wrap and shipped in a massive box marked "fragile" on every side, including the bottom, UPS still managed to smash the box and my lantern.

(Thankful for shipping insurance, so at least neither I nor the seller are out any money. But literally any shipping option in the US just sucks.)

Guess I'm learning how to repair paper.

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A random fact for your day:

The earliest Japanese illustration of a sunflower dates to 1666. Sunflowers aren't native to Japan and were introduced through trade, likely by way of China.

(Image from the National Diet Library.)

It seems sunflowers weren't popular during the Edo period. Although they're a striking yellow, their overly large size made them unpopular for Edo's cultivated gardens, which generally preferred much smaller decorative flowers.

People apparently considered sunflowers to be vulgar and unnecessarily large.

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Did I need to buy kamishimo? Of course, for reference and research purposes. I'll post more pictures at a later date, but here are some close-ups so you can appreciate the dyed pattern of this fabric with me.

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I am working on creating a separate tumblr for my Okada Izo posts.

Not because I'm going to stop posting about him here, but because I wanted a space where I can better organize the historical information about him, and where I can share my writing and some of my anachronistic nonsense (like this) without getting weird on main.

It's still very much a work in progress, but if you like Izo, please bookmark the page. I have a ton of stuff saved that I will be uploading there in the near future.

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(via Facebook)

Jitte / Jutte with an attached chain, which is weird and different and I've never seen one in real life. I unfortunately showed this to my husband and he's currently in negotiations with our local blacksmith friend to make one.

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I'm so entirely over writing actual patient assessments at work and fictional case analyses in grad school, so I'm taking a break, putting my education to good use, and writing a biopsychosocial assessment of Izo instead.

Izo from Chiruran for good measure and the anachronistic assessment is under the cut.

Biopsychosocial Assessment

Client Name (stated): Doi Tetsuzo

Client Name (legal): Okada Izo, confirmed via secondary identification

Assessment date: Late January 1864

Age: 25

Referral Source: Client presented voluntarily following a brief encounter in the Gion district; referral was initiated by a mutual acquaintance who expressed concern. Client was initially reluctant but agreed to attend a single session. He did not acknowledge his legal name during intake.

I. Presenting Problem

Client presents with no stated chief complaint. When asked what brought him in, he shrugged and said, "Someone thought I should come." He was dismissive of the referral throughout and did not volunteer information freely. However, with structured questioning he disclosed the following: he has been without stable housing for several months, is currently sleeping in an abandoned residence he entered without permission, has no reliable income or food source, and has been consuming alcohol daily in quantities he described as "enough to sleep." He stated he had no comrades, no employer, and "nowhere that would take me." He used the word meiwaku (trouble, burden) to refer to himself on three separate occasions during the initial interview, each time unprompted.

He did not present with an acute psychiatric complaint and denied suicidal ideation directly when asked, though the denial was notably flat and he did not make eye contact when giving it.

II. Biological Assessment

Physical health and appearance:

Client is a lean male of approximately 165 cm. His build is consistent with prolonged caloric restriction. His skin shows the weathering of extended outdoor exposure — freckled, sun-damaged, darker than average — and he presents with the pallor of someone who has not eaten adequately in days. His clothing is dirty and worn. His hair, worn up but poorly managed, had come largely apart by the time he sat down.

He reported eating "sometimes once a day, sometimes less," noting that he sometimes takes food offerings from shrines or graveyards. He did not appear embarrassed by this admission, which suggests either a degree of dissociation from shame around basic self-care, or that the behavior has been sufficiently normalized through necessity.

Substance use:

Client reports daily alcohol consumption. He described onset at approximately age 24, initially as a sleep aid following a period of acute distress (see Psychological section), escalating to regular heavy use within a matter of months. He minimized the extent of current use but acknowledged that he cannot sleep without it and becomes physically ill when he goes more than a day without drinking. These symptoms are consistent with physiological alcohol dependence. He does not describe his drinking as a problem, referring to it instead as "what I do now." He denied use of other substances.

Medical history and physical injuries:

Client has two notable scars. A small jagged scar on the upper right chest, self-reported as a childhood injury. A well-healed lateral scar, approximately 9 cm, across the left forearm, which he was evasive about. He initially stated he "got cut" and changed the subject.

He denied any current pain or untreated medical conditions. Observation suggests malnutrition. No acute medical concerns were identified in this session, though the clinician noted that his hands were not entirely steady.

Developmental and learning history:

Client disclosed, with some apparent reluctance, that he struggled significantly in school — specifically with reading and writing. He was emphatic that this was a matter of kanji, not comprehension: he stated that he understands text when it is read aloud without difficulty and has no trouble retaining or recalling information he has heard. He described being able to memorize long passages verbatim from oral repetition. His frustration in framing this distinction was evident and suggests he has spent considerable time defending himself against the assumption of unintelligence.

The clinician notes that the described profile — difficulty with written characters but intact verbal comprehension, strong auditory memory, intact reasoning — is consistent with a specific reading difficulty, likely of the type now categorized under learning differences (dyslexia, logographic variant). This was never formally identified and the client has instead internalized others' characterizations of him as stupid without apparent critical distance.

III. PSYCHOLOGICAL FACTORS

Presenting psychological state:

Client is alert and oriented. His speech is low and measured; he does not volunteer information but responds to direct questions. His affect is restricted and predominantly flat with occasional brief flashes of something sharper — frustration, mostly — when the topic of his former teacher arose. He chose his words carefully when discussing emotionally loaded subjects, which appears to be a habitual protective strategy rather than an inability to access or articulate feeling.

He smiles rarely. When he did, briefly, while discussing something from his childhood, the change in his face was marked enough to be notable.

Mood and affect:

Client denies depressed mood in direct terms but describes a state of global diminishment: he does not make plans, does not anticipate anything, does not see a clear path forward. He described the future as "not something I think about." He was not agitated but radiated a quality of exhausted containment — a person managing something large through sheer habitual effort.

Trauma history:

Client was evasive on this point and the clinician did not press in an intake session. He acknowledged that the past two years had been "difficult" and that he had been "involved in things" he did not want to discuss. He said, unprompted, "I did what I was told." The phrasing, combined with his flat affect and the evident forearm scar, suggests significant trauma exposure. The clinician notes that the nature of this trauma is unclear and does not pursue it further at this time.

He describes a history of being publicly and repeatedly humiliated — by teachers, by peers, by his former teacher and comrades — in a pattern that began in childhood and continued well into adulthood. He does not describe these experiences as injurious; he accepts them as an accurate reflection of his worth. The degree of internalization is significant.

Self-concept and identity:

Client's identity appears to have been almost entirely organized around two things: swordsmanship, and his former teacher. He describes the dojo where he trained as the first place outside his home where an adult praised him; he describes his teacher as the person who gave him opportunity and direction. Both of those structures are now absent. His former teacher has been imprisoned; his own status within his domain is that of a deserter. He has, by his own description, no role, no affiliation, no income, and no community.

He used the phrase yakutatazu (useless, good for nothing) to describe himself. When the clinician reflected it back to him as a word he seemed to have heard a great deal, he agreed without affect. "Since I was a kid."

Cognitive functioning:

Despite the internalized narrative of stupidity, client demonstrates intact reasoning, good situational memory, and the capacity for nuanced observation. He noticed details about the consulting room that the clinician had not mentioned. He caught a subtle re-framing in a question and identified it immediately. His memory for specific dates, names, and sequences of events appears unusually precise. He does not appear to recognize any of this as evidence of intelligence; it simply does not factor into his self-assessment.

Risk assessment:

Client denied active suicidal ideation. However, he presents with multiple risk factors: social isolation, alcohol dependence, loss of primary attachment figure, loss of social role and identity, and a pattern of self-abandonment (not eating, not seeking shelter, describing himself consistently in terms of worthlessness). He does not appear to be actively seeking his own death but shows little evidence of actively investing in his own survival either.

IV. SOCIAL FACTORS

Current living situation:

Client is effectively homeless. He has been occupying an abandoned residence that he entered through a loose fence board. He is aware that this is illegal and that he risks arrest. He describes this as a minor concern relative to having somewhere warm to sleep.

Support network:

By client's account: none currently functional. He listed parents and a younger brother in Tosa, but stated that he cannot return to his domain due to his status as a deserter; he has had no contact with his family in well over a year. He mentioned a former employer (referred to obliquely, not named) with evident warmth, but stated that he left that position and "it was my own fault." He did not elaborate, but the self-attribution of blame was immediate.

He has no current friends, no comrades, no colleagues.

History of social relationships:

Client describes a pattern in which his social belonging was largely conditional on performance or utility. He was accepted by peers in childhood because he was physically skilled; he was valued at the dojo because he was talented with a sword; he was given opportunities by his former teacher in exchange for work he later came to understand was not in his own interest. He does not appear to have had relationships in which he was valued simply for being present. He does not name this as a loss, but the clinician notes it.

He blushes easily and is embarrassed by public displays of emotion or foolishness. He describes finding it mortifying when others make spectacles of themselves in social settings, which the clinician reads as consistent with heightened shame sensitivity, likely developed in an environment where humiliation was frequent and unpredictable.

Occupational/financial:

Currently has no income. He sold what he describes as his most valued possession — a sword — some time ago to cover living expenses. The significance of this was not stated but was visible on his face. He has since been surviving on what he can extort or steal.

V. CLINICAL IMPRESSIONS AND FORMULATION

Okada Izo (presenting as Doi Tetsuzo) is a 25-year-old male currently presenting in a state of significant psychosocial deterioration following a series of compounding losses: loss of institutional identity (removal from the Kinnoto's membership roster, status as deserter), loss of primary attachment (separation from his teacher and mentor, Takechi Hanpeita), loss of livelihood, and loss of stable housing. These losses have not occurred in isolation; they follow a developmental history characterized by chronic academic humiliation, conditional social belonging, and an identity organized almost entirely around a single skill and a single relationship.

The most clinically significant feature of this presentation is not the external crisis, which is severe, but the internal landscape in which it is occurring. Client shows a complete absence of self-protective cognition. He does not describe his circumstances as unjust or unfair; he describes them as his own fault, his own failure, his own inadequacy. The vocabulary of self-deprecation is so habitual as to appear automatic, offered without distress, which suggests it was acquired very early and has never been challenged. He does not appear to experience these beliefs as beliefs. He appears to experience them as facts.

Alcohol dependence is serving a clear function: it manages the physiological symptoms of chronic stress, facilitates sleep, and provides the small, repeatable comfort of something predictable in an environment that is otherwise entirely unpredictable. Addressing it directly at this stage, without first establishing safety and trust, is likely to be counterproductive.

Preliminary Impressions:

Alcohol Use Disorder, Severe

Major Depressive Disorder, current episode, with passive suicidal features

Complex trauma exposure (nature and extent unconfirmed)

Possible Specific Learning Difference (reading/writing, undiagnosed, lifelong)

Chronic low self-worth organized around early and sustained experiences of humiliation

Attachment disruption following loss of primary relational figure

Risk level at time of assessment: Intermediate. Client is not actively seeking self-harm but is engaged in a pattern of self-neglect that constitutes a passive risk. He is also engaged in behaviors (extortion, unlawful residence) that create significant risk of arrest.

VI. RECOMMENDATIONS

Prioritize safety planning around housing and food before any formal psychological work is attempted.

Psychoeducation around alcohol dependence should be introduced gently and without framing current use as moral failure.

Longer-term therapeutic work, if trust can be established, should focus on the internalized framework of self-worth — specifically, the unchallenged equation between others' assessment of him and factual truth.

A follow-up session is recommended within the week. Client was non-committal but did not refuse.

Clinician's note: Client stood to leave and, unprompted, bowed properly — formal, practiced, unhurried. It was the most composed he looked in the entire session. Whatever he thinks of himself, someone taught him that, and he has not let it go.

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One of the few events we attend every year asked us to bring a whole display this time, so we brought a little bit of everything.

Our focus is largely on Edo period police work, so a lot of the items are focused on that, but because we were asked to bring more material culture items, we've also included the sorts of things one might carry while traveling and some games, including a couple of children's games since we get a lot of families at events.

Perhaps my favorite item is the Edo period equivalent of a tactical flashlight, which takes a little candle that sits on a gyroscopic assembly so it won't go out even if you move the device around.

This was also the first time we displayed our restored sodegarami 袖搦（そでがらみ) , which was recently mounted to a new pole since the original wood did not survive.

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Chiruran / Song of the Samurai is to the Bakumatsu period what The Last Samurai is to the Satsuma Rebellion, in that a vague historical connection exists and characters are inspired by mostly real people, but that's where the similarities end. I'm okay with that since Chiruran is based on a manga and the sword-fighting is fun.

I can also forgive Chiruran a lot since the producers chose to treat Okada Izo nicely, even though he doesn't historically have much interaction with any of the Shinsengumi.

They framed him as a reluctant assassin forced into that role by Takechi Hanpeita's machinations, in the series through the murder of a fellow sword student who looked up to Izo like a brother, and in real life it was through the debt Izo owed Takechi. And they showed him struggling with the ramifications of killing without ideological conviction and without wanting to kill, which again is one of the more realistic portrayals. We even get a poor little meow meow moment when Izo is eating from the literal trash while hiding in Kyoto, which is not actually far from the truth. And then the producers chose to be very kind about Izo's prison stay, which diverges from history in the best possible way.

(Also, Nakajima Kento is a cute Izo.)

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Hikimawashi

Yamada-machi prison was not located near the execution grounds, it sat on the complete opposite end of Kochi castle town. Edo-period urban planning deliberately separated the prison from the open riverbed where common executions and public display of severed heads took place.

Okada Izo and the other members of the Tosa Kinnoto were held at Yamada-machi prison. On the 1830s map, the prison sits in the upper-right corner (highlighted in pink), while the Gankirigawara execution grounds lie on the southwest outskirts, the bottom-left corner, well beyond the map's edge.

Izo would have been marched through the streets of the castle town from the prison to the execution grounds, following a custom known as hikimawashi, the parade of shame. Because he had been stripped of his samurai status and condemned as a common criminal, the authorities designed his final walk to be a deliberate public spectacle.

On the morning of July 3, 1865, Izo was bound tightly in ropes and brought out of the gates of Yamada-machi prison. He was placed on horseback, surrounded by armed guards and officials carrying placards listing his crimes, then paraded through the most crowded districts of the castle town as a warning to the public.

His route likely looked something like this: leaving Yamada-machi prison, the procession headed south and west through the bustling merchant districts before turning onto the long, straight samurai street running parallel to the Kagami River, with local residents and lower-ranking samurai lining the road to watch him pass, until he was finally brought out onto the wide gravel flats of Gankirigawara to face the executioner.

Goodbye to Shichiken-machi

Izo didn't merely pass by his home on the way to his execution, he started right next to it. The Okada family home on Shichiken-machi street (marked in yellow on the map above) sat north-west of the prison compound, just across a small bridge. When the guards marched Izo out of the front gates that morning, he would have seen his old neighborhood and his family home across the river.

His parents and younger brother Keikichi, who was under house arrest at the time, were almost certainly inside, but the family of a condemned criminal scheduled for public parade and execution was strictly forbidden from interacting with or seeing off the prisoner. The procession was an act of public shaming managed tightly by guards, and any attempt by the family to step outside, call his name, or offer a final word of comfort would have been treated as obstruction of domain justice, a serious offense carrying severe legal consequences.

Gankirikawara

Gankiri riverbank lay near what is today the Momiji Bridge, which spans the Kagami River. Historically, this stretch of riverbed served as one of the domain's three execution grounds. The landscape has changed significantly: the original gravel riverbed has largely been replaced by modern embankments but the bridge marks the general vicinity where Okada Izo's head was put on public display.

(The cursive notes accompanying the sketch above serve as a factual caption, recording that in the sixth month of the Ganshi era (1865), the public display of the severed head of Izo from Tosa was carried out.)

After the execution, Izo's body was likely buried in an unmarked mass grave while his head was displayed on a wooden board beside the bridge along with a placard listing his crimes. Once the initial three-day public display ended and the guards withdrew, Izo's younger brother Keikichi quietly went to reclaim his remains during the night. Thanks to Keikichi's efforts, Izo was given a proper burial at the Okada family plot.

In the aftermath of the execution, the Tosa domain issued an official punishment to the Okada household. The family was stripped of their goshi status, their small annual stipend of roughly 20 koku of rice confiscated, and they were reduced overnight to the status of commoners. Izo's father, Gihei, died just days later.

(There's a possible discrepancy here as some sources have him dying a few days prior to Izo's death, rather than a few days after. As he had previously attempted to appeal on Izo's behalf directly to domain authorities, which was highly improper, I wonder whether he committed seppuku. Which, I suppose, could still be a potential cause of death even after Izo's execution if he chose to take his life once the family were issued their official punishment.)

Keikichi chose to stay in Tosa rather than flee, quietly rebuilding his life and protecting his mother, Rie. Rie lived to see her younger son marry and have children, and was eventually buried in the family plot alongside her husband and eldest son.

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Takechi Hanpeita does not deserve a statue (especially not next to Sakamoto Ryoma) and he certainly didn't deserve Okada Izo's loyalty and that's a hill I'm willing to die on.

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Yamada-machi Prison

(Nothing gets better. I would prefer this to be fiction.)

Yamada-machi prison was the grim stage for the downfall of Okada Izo, Takechi Hanpeita, and the Tosa Kinnoto. Its conditions were brutal, unsanitary, and governed by the rigid class hierarchies of the Edo period.

The prison was divided by social caste. Takechi Hanpeita, as a samurai (though of kashi rank), was held in relatively clean rooms with proper lighting. He could wear his own clothing and receive books, letters, food, and clean garments from family and supporters. Takechi famously painted a self-portrait in jail, showing himself seated on a mat or cushion, keeping cool with a fan.

Izo enjoyed no such treatment. Though he had once held samurai status, he had forfeited it by deserting his domain. Suspected of having information that could be used against Takechi, he was placed in solitary confinement.

(The picture above is Maebashi prison and it's a shared cell, but you get the idea. The padlocked door is small, just large enough to fit trough while bent over to prevent prisoners from trying to rush the guards when it was opened. The small window on the right was used to pass food and water through.)

The solitary cells were wooden boxes roughly the size of a single tatami mat (that's a little bigger than the size of a queen mattress, for those wondering), enclosed by thick, closely spaced bars on the front (which opened to a covered corridor) and back (which opened to the outside), with solid boards between cells. Each prisoner was given a single wooden bucket for a toilet, emptied only occasionally. The floors were perpetually damp. Fleas and lice were constant companions, and skin disease and dysentery moved through the cells. Prisoners in solitary were sometimes kept bound in rope even inside their cells to prevent suicide or escape.

Food came twice a day: a coarse blend of grains, rationed to roughly three go (about 450 grams) per prisoner. A pinch of coarse sea salt or a sliver of pickled radish provided the only flavor. On some days, guards ladled out a watery soup made from a small amount of miso paste or leftover sake lees dissolved in hot water, rarely containing actual vegetables.

In the sweltering Kochi summers, dehydration was a constant threat, and guards exploited it deliberately. Water was distributed in measured wooden ladles, and an uncooperative prisoner might find his rations cut in half or his water withheld entirely to force physical collapse before the next interrogation.

The interrogation itself followed the standard brutality of the Edo period. Izo was repeatedly bound in agonizing positions and beaten with bamboo rods.

When that failed to break him, the officials turned to a device specific to Tosa: a local variant of the leg-pressing torture known as soroban torture. Most prisons across the shogunate practiced ishidaki (pictured below), forcing the prisoner to kneel on wooden slats while heavy stone slabs were stacked one by one onto their thighs. Tosa's version dispensed with the stones. Instead, the prisoner was forced into seiza on a heavy wooden board with rows of sharp, triangular ridges. A thick wooden beam was then lowered horizontally across the thighs, attached to a frame by hinges or rope. Rather than relying on dead weight alone, guards could sit on the far ends of the beam, bounce it, or mechanically tighten it, multiplying the crushing force and causing the ridges beneath to saw rhythmically into the prisoner's shins.

(There's no surviving example or illustration of Tosa's device, only descriptions. There is an illustration of Izo being tortured with it in the "Oi! Ryoma" manga, which is not a historical source, obviously, but may be based on a specific historical source. That one shows the top beam to also have triangular ridges like the bottom board, meaning it would do the same to the thighs.)

The results were catastrophic. The lever concentrated enormous force onto the sharp wooden ridges, which acted like dull blades. Skin split, bone cracked, and blood flow to the lower legs was cut off. The sustained pressure destroyed nerves, damaged the knees, and dislocated ankles. By the end of a session, the prisoner's legs were a bloody mess of open wounds, unable to bear weight. Izo would have been carried back to his cell like dead weight after every interrogation.

The records show that Izo initially tried to endure it. But unlike the members of the Kinnoto who were sustained by their ideological conviction, Izo had joined the movement for a much simpler reason: his indebtedness to Takechi, who had already abandoned him. Yet even so, he still tried to protect Takechi and his former comrades.

The cell directly adjacent to Izo's was that of a fellow Tosa Kinnoto member, Shimamura Sadanoshin. The two men discovered they could speak through the gaps in the shared partition, and so began a series of conversations that would ripple through the entire prison. Their exchanges were tense. When Izo was dragged back to his cell after torture, bleeding, broken, crying from sheer agony, Shimamura would listen from the other side of the wall. He offered comfort, but also pressed Izo relentlessly: What did you tell them? Say nothing. Protect Takechi. Izo, in his pain and fury, shouted back about the unendurable suffering he was facing alone. Through these exchanges, Shimamura began to piece together the extent of Izo's cooperation, passing word down the prison line to other cells where it eventually reached Takechi.

Izo broke in waves. First came admissions of his own actions: the assassinations he had carried out in Kyoto, including the killings of Honma Seiichiro and Bunkichi. Then came the names: accomplices and those who had given the orders. Surviving diaries from Kinnoto members record the panic that spread through the prison as Izo talked, the fear that their entire network across Japan would be exposed and executed.

It was this panic that produced the apparent plot to poison Izo. Desperate to silence Izo before he could testify against Takechi, his former comrades approached Izo's father and brother for permission to smuggle poisoned food to Izo. His family refused. If any other attempts were made without the family's permission, they failed. Either the plot was never carried out, the food didn't make it to Izo, or he didn't eat it.

When Izo realized what they had tried to do, however, whatever loyalty remained in him evaporated completely. He stopped listening to Shimamura's pleas through the wall. From that point forward, he spoke freely and fully to the interrogators, providing the detailed testimony that the domain's government needed to convict Takechi Hanpeita.

The final judicial records note that Izo's confessions sealed the fate of the Tosa Kinnoto. Prison guards described him in his final days as quiet and empty, refusing food, speaking to nobody. Only occasionally, still, begging to speak to Takechi.

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Izo's Long Journey Back to Tosa

(Warning, things just get worse from here.)

Because Okada Izo was arrested in Kyoto, he had to be transported back to Tosa — a journey that could take a week or more.

The moment he was turned over to Tosa at the city gate, he was placed inside a transport cage called a shujinkago (also known as a toumarokago): a bamboo basket just large enough for a person to sit upright, bound entirely in rope and carried by lower-class laborers like cargo. Sometimes a wooden plaque bearing the prisoner's name and crimes was fastened to the outside.

The cage was a utilitarian device designed for security, public shaming, and total physical confinement. Inside, there were no comforts: no padding, no seating, no protection from the elements. A prisoner wasn't simply placed inside and left to sit freely, either. Before being loaded into the cage, his hands would be bound tightly, and his legs might be shackled as well.

Long-distance prisoner transport in the Edo period was a brutal exercise in bare-minimum survival. Because Izo needed to stand trial alive in Tosa, his guards were obligated to keep him from dying of dehydration or starvation, but they managed his basic needs with absolute security and zero dignity. Water was delivered by sliding a wooden ladle or bamboo tube through an opening or between the cage's narrow slats and pouring it directly into his mouth. If he refused to drink, guards would use a wooden wedge to pry his jaw open. Food was equally stark: cold balls of coarse brown rice, broken into small chunks and fed to him by hand.

The most degrading aspect of the journey, however, was sanitation. Prisoners were almost never released from the cage because the risk of escape was too great. The cage floor was not solid wood. Some versions featured wooden or bamboo slats with gaps between them (like the reproduction in the first photo), others had a small removable panel positioned beneath the prisoner's seat. Slide-in trays or straw mats attached under the floor collected human waste while the procession marched. At rest stops, the lower-class laborers would pull the trays out, dump and rinse them, and slide them back into place.

Transporting a prisoner from Kyoto to Tosa entirely overland was impractical, so the domain relied on its established shipping routes instead. Izo was first carried south to the port city of Osaka, where the Tosa domain maintained a large fortified warehouse. There, the cage was loaded onto a transport ship, stowed in the dark below deck, and the vessel set sail west through the Seto Inland Sea before cutting south through the Kii Channel to round the rugged eastern coast of Shikoku.

The full journey from Kyoto to Tosa took roughly one to two weeks, depending on weather, sea conditions, and the precautions taken along the way. The land leg from Kyoto to Osaka moved at a heavy, deliberate pace, with the procession stopping regularly at designated checkpoints to swap out the exhausted laborers carrying the cage.

Once aboard the ship, the timeline shifted to the mercy of wind and current. In ideal conditions, a fast vessel could reach Urado Bay, the coastal gateway to Kochi, in about three days. Rough seas or unfavorable headwinds could force the ship to anchor or shelter in a coastal port, stretching that leg of the trip to a week or more. After docking at the bay, guards marched Izo along the Tosa road system until they reached the city.

The domain carefully timed his arrival. He was marched through the gates of the castle town in broad daylight, fully visible inside his open wooden cage, a deliberate display signaling to the population that Okada Izo had been brought home to face judgment. By the time the procession reached the gates of Yamada-machi prison, he would have been caked in sweat, dirt, and filth, physically broken after days of cramped confinement.

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Izo's Arrest and Punishment in Kyoto

By late 1863, Izo had drifted away from the Tosa Kinnoto, losing his financial backing along with it. He was now destitute, living hand-to-mouth in the capital and even eventually selling his long sword to survive.

In February 1864, Kyoto police arrested him. He was broke, starving, and homeless. To survive, he had turned to a practice known as oshikari: low-level extortion, shaking down Kyoto merchant houses for money. When interrogated, Izo gave a false name, Tetsuzo, and managed to hold to it long enough that the Kyoto police initially failed to realize they had one of the hitokiri sitting in their cells.

For his crimes, he received a brutal three-part sentence: tattooing, public flogging, and banishment from the city.

The tattoo was the standard corporal punishment for minor crimes — petty theft, swindling, burglary, and fighting. Authorities would forcibly tattoo a specific mark onto the criminal's arm or forehead as a permanent, unerasable criminal record. Each region used its own design, so that anyone who saw it would know exactly where the bearer had been convicted and what they had done. For Izo's crimes in Kyoto, the mark was two upright bars — roughly the width of a thumb and twice as long — tattooed above the elbow.

Flogging (tataki) was another formal punishment of the Edo period, applied only to commoners and ronin, not to samurai, women, or boys under the age of 15. Fifty lashes constituted a light beating; one hundred, a heavy one. It was used for minor crimes such as theft and fighting. The instrument was a bamboo whip called a bokijiri, one shaku and nine sun in length, applied to the shoulders, back, and buttocks while carefully avoiding the spine. Before the punishment began, a mat was laid out and the prisoner stripped and made to lie face down, with four men holding his arms and legs. A counter stood nearby to tally the blows, and in the case of a heavy flogging, the prisoner was given water (and smelling salts, if he had fallen unconscious) after the fiftieth stroke while the beaters rotated for the remainder. The beating was typically carried out in public, before a crowd. For a string of burglaries like Izo's, he would almost certainly have received the maximum: one hundred blows.

By the time the Kyoto authorities were finished with him, Izo's back would have been deeply bruised and perhaps bloodied, even though the punishment was not designed to break the skin, while his arm bore the fresh ink of a common thief's tattoo.

The records show he was also sentenced to formal banishment from Kyoto and its surrounding suburbs. In June 1864, he was escorted to the border gate, where Tosa domain officials seized him, bound him, and placed him under heavy guard for deportation back to his hometown.

When Takechi Hanpeita, who was already imprisoned in Tosa, learned of Izo's arrest, he was furious and deeply ashamed. In letters written from his prison cell to his family, he bitterly complained: "It is better for such a fool to die soon... How his parents must lament over him for returning unashamedly to his hometown."

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The arrow indicates Okada Izo's name on this document, which is in the collection of the Sakamoto Ryoma Memorial Museum.

In this, a metsuke (a shogunate inspector) stationed in Kyoto reports on the circumstances of Okada Izo's arrest in Kyoto on 10 February 1864 (a few days shy of his birthday, which was 14 February). At the time, Izo was a deserter from his domain, hiding in Kyoto under the alias Tetsuzo. He forced his way into the shop of a man named Kasaijiro (I think) and attempted to extort money, which was the cause of his arrest. The Kyoto machi-bugyosho (magistrate's office) was in charge of the case.

Since this report, which was likely written within a few weeks of Izo's arrest in Kyoto, uses his real name rather than his alias, it seems he was identified (or identified himself) long before he was turned over to Tosa authorities in June 1864.

I think it's interesting the Kyoto authorities or the shogunate did not take charge of his case, considering the political violence he had carried out in Kyoto. But within the historical context in which a domain's samurai might be thought of as the property of that domain, it also makes sense that he was turned over.

This document is Izo's official record of charges and punishment in Kyoto, also from the collection of the Sakamoto Ryoma Memorial Museum.

The official responsible for writing out the sentence was Saito Yasutaro, a doshin serving under Oguri Shimousa-no-kami (Oguri Masayasu), the East Kyoto magistrate at the time. Doshin were low ranking police officers and administrators who were generally present at these types of proceedings, but also conducted investigations and patrols in the city.

On a side note, Oguri himself had just taken charge as the East Kyoto magistrate the month Izo was arrested, February 1864. He previously served as a liaison between the imperial court in Kyoto and the shogunate in Edo.

Izo, who is identified in this document as the vagrant (mushoku) Tetsuzo, was sentenced to expulsion from the capital and it's suburbs (rakuchū-rakugai-harai) and branding (yakiin). However, we know from other records that Izo was tattooed, rather than branded, so I wonder why that wording was used as they're (to my understanding) not interchangeable.

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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.

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